Immediately the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness.
Parallel Translations
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Immediately the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness.
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And immediatly the sprete drave him into wildernes:
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And immediatly the Spirite driueth him into the wildernesse.
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Passages linked to Mark 1:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 4:1-11 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’ ” Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’ ” Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory. He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ ” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him.
- Luke 4:1-13 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ” The devil, leading him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil said to him, “I will give you all this authority, and their glory, for it has been delivered to me; and I give it to whomever I want. If you therefore will worship before me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “Get behind me Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ ” He led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you;’ and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus answering, said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ” When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until another time.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Christ being tempted overcometh.
Christ being tempted overcometh.
Here is no violent and forcible driving out meant: but the divine power claddeth Christ (who had lived until this time as a private man) with a new person, and prepareth him to the combat that was at hand, and to his ministry.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 12 And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the…
12 And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.
Ver. 12. The Spirit driveth him] That is, suddenly carrieth him (who was most willing to go) as that legal scape goat, Lev 16:8-10, into the wilderness, and there permitted him to be tempted, but supported him under the temptation, that he came safe off again. Sancti etiam nequaquam sui iuris sunt, sed toti spiritus cedunt imperio. The saints are at God’s beck and check.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Both Matthew and Luke relate the history of our…
Both Matthew and Luke relate the history of our Saviour’s temptations by the devil more fully. See Poole on "Mat 4:1-2". Mark saith immediately, but it is not to be taken strictly for the next moment, but after a day or two, as it should seem.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Immediately, That is, 1. After his baptism. Christ is…
Immediately, That is, 1. After his baptism. Christ is no sooner out of the water of baptism, but he is in the fire of temptation: such as are baptized with Christ, and entered into the profession of christianity, must look to be assaulted with Satan’s temptations.
Again, immediately, that is, 2. After the Father had declared his complacency in him, and being well pleased with him.
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Learn thence, That great manifestations of love from God are usually followed with great temptations from God. The Spirit driveth him, that is, the Holy Spirit of God. For the devil is seldom, if ever, called the Spirit, but usually some brand of reproach is annexed, as the evil spirit, or the unclean spirit and the like.
Christ was led by the Spirit, says Mat 4:1. He was driven by the Spirit, says St. Mark; that is, he was carried by a strong impulse of the Spirit of God to be tempted by Satan, and did not go of his own private motion to enter the lists with Satan. Teaching us our duty, not to run into or rush upon temptations, without a warrant and call from God.
Observe next, The place where Satan assaulted Christ with his temptations: it was a solitary wilderness. No place can privilege us from temptations, or be a sanctuary from Satan’s assaults. The solitary wilderness has a tempter in it: yea, Satan oftentimes makes use of men’s solitariness to further his temptations; and such as separate themselves from human society, and give themselves up to solitude and retirement, give great advantage to the tempter to tempt them.
Observe next, the time and continuance of our holy Lord’s temptations; not for an hour, a day, a week, or a month, but for forty days and forty nights; not all the time, but very often in that time. Teaching us what we are to expect from Satan; temptations not a few; he will not solicit us once, but often to resist him.
Observe farther, A special aggravation of our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness. He was with the wild beasts, having no comfort from man, but only wild beasts for his companions, which were more likely to annoy and hurt him, than any way to help and comfort him. Here we have an evidence of the divine power of Christ; who, as Lord of the creatures, can alter and change the nature of the creature at his pleasure; restraining the most savage and hurtful beasts from hurting either himself or any of his people.
Observe lastly, The supply sent in to Christ in the hour of temptation: The angels came and ministered unto him; food to his hungry body, and comfort to his tempted soul.
Learn thence, that those who in the hour of temptation do hold out in resisting Satan, shall find that the power and faithfulness of God will not be wanting to them to send in succour and relief at last; Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And immediately,.... As soon as he was baptized, and…
And immediately,.... As soon as he was baptized, and this testimony had been given of his divine sonship, the very selfsame day,
the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness: into a more remote and desolate part of it; for it was in the wilderness John was baptizing and preaching, when Christ came to him, and had the ordinance of baptism administered by him; and it was the same Spirit that descended on him at his baptism, which remained with him; by whose impulse he was moved, though not against his will, to go into, this desert and forlorn place. For this was not the evil spirit Satan, by whom he was tempted; for Matthew expressly says, that he was "led up of the Spirit--to be tempted by the devil", Mat 4:1, where the devil that tempted him, is manifestly distinguished from the Spirit by whom he was led, and the same Spirit is meant here, as there. Moreover, in one of Beza's copies, and in his most ancient one, and in one of Stephens's, it is read, "the Holy Spirit driveth him"; See Gill on Mat 4:1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain And immediately the Spirit thrusteth him out into the…
And immediately the Spirit thrusteth him out into the wilderness - So in all the children of God, extraordinary manifestations of his favour are wont to be followed by extraordinary temptations. Matt. iv, 1; Luke iv, 1.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 12. The Spirit driveth him] εκβαλλει, putteth him…
Verse 12. The Spirit driveth him] εκβαλλει, putteth him forth. St. Matthew says, Mt 4:1, ανηχθη, was brought up. See this important subject of our Lord's temptation explained at large, Mt 4:1-11.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mar 1:12-13. Immediately the Spirit driveth him — Gr.…
Mar 1:12-13. Immediately the Spirit driveth him — Gr. εκβαλλει, thrusteth him out, or, sends him away, as the same word signifies, Mar 1:43. Luke says, ηγετο, he was moved, or led; Matthew, ανηχθη, he was led up, namely, from the plain of Jordan. He was forty days tempted of Satan — Invisibly. After this followed the temptation by him in a visible shape, related by Matthew. These forty days, says Dr. Lightfoot, the holy angels ministered to Christ visibly, and Satan tempted him invisibly; at the end of them, Satan puts on the appearance of an angel of light, and pretends to wait on him as they did. See on Mat 4:2-11. And was with the wild beasts — Though they had no power to hurt him. Mark, we may observe, not only gives us a compendium of Matthew’s gospel, but likewise several valuable particulars, which he and the other evangelists have omitted; especially such particulars as might enable the Romans, or Gentiles in general, better to understand him. Thus, as a Roman might not know how wild and uninhabited the deserts of Arabia were, in which Christ was tempted, he adds here, that he was with the wild beasts.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Here Mark relates concisely what Matthew has recorded more…
Here Mark relates concisely what Matthew has recorded more at length in Mark 4.
The Spirit driveth - The word “driveth” does not mean that he was compelled forcibly against his will to go there, but that he was inclined to go there by the Spirit, or was led there. The Spirit of God, for important purposes, caused him to go. Compare Mat 9:25, where the same word is used in the original: “And when they were all put forth” in Greek, “all driven out.”
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And was with the wild beasts - This is added to show the desolation and danger of his dwelling there. In this place, surrounded by such dangers, the temptations offered by Satan were the stronger. Amid want and perils, Satan might suppose that he would be more easily seduced from God. But he trusted in his Father, and was alike delivered from dangers, from the wild beasts, and from the power of temptation, thus teaching us what to do in the day of danger and trial.
And the angels ministered unto him - From Luk 4:2 we learn that in those days he did eat nothing. When Mark says, therefore, that the angels ministered to him, it means after the days of temptation had expired, as is said by Mat 4:11.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Into the desert. For the description of this desert,…
Into the desert. For the description of this desert, &c. read Maundrel’s Travels, or extracts therefrom in Rutter’s Evangelical Harmony. Vol. i. p. 169.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain § 17. — THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS, Mar_1:12-13.
§ 17. — THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS, Mar_1:12-13.
12. Driveth him into the wilderness — The Spirit impelled him to go where inclination would not have induced him. Matthew says, the Spirit “led” him. He was impelled by the divine impulse; he was “led” by the divine guidance.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 12. immediately] See above, Mar_1:10. The object of the…
12. immediately] See above, Mar_1:10. The object of the Saviour’s first Advent was “to destroy the works of the devil” (1Jn_3:8). His very first work, therefore, was to enter on a conflict with the great Enemy of mankind.
driveth him] This is a stronger word than that employed by St Matthew, who says He was led up (Mat_4:1), or by St Luke, who says He was led by the Spirit (Luk_4:1). The same word is here used as in Mat_9:38, “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest;” in Joh_10:4, “when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them.” The word denotes the Divine impulse of the Holy Ghost, which constrained Him to go forth to the encounter, and hints at a rapid translation, such as that by which Prophets and Evangelists were caught up and carried to a distance (1Ki_18:12; 2Ki_2:16; Act_8:39).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (12) Immediately the spirit driveth him.—See Notes on Mat_4:1;…
(12) Immediately the spirit driveth him.—See Notes on Mat_4:1; but note also St. Mark’s characteristic “immediately,” and the stronger word “driveth him.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Driveth him (ekballei); literally, driveth him forth. That Holy…
Driveth him (ekballei); literally, driveth him forth. That Holy Spirit, which not long before he had received at his baptism, impelled him with great energy; so that of his own accord he went forth, armed with Divine power, into the desert, that there, as in a wrestling-place, he might contend alone with Satan. There Christ and antichrist met, and entered upon the conflict upon the issue of which our salvation depended.
Vers. 12, 13. The temptation of Christ.
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The portal by which our Lord entered upon his earthly ministry has two pillars the baptism and the temptation. In his baptism the Saviour was visibly and audibly approved by God the Father. In his temptation he was manifestly put to the test by the power of evil. Consecration and probation were thus the two elements in the Redeemer"s inauguration, by which he was dedicated to the earthly ministry of humiliation, obedience, and benevolence. Mark"s narrative of the temptation is brief, but suggestive.
I The evangelist notes THE DIVINE IMPULSE which led Jesus to the place appointed for this spiritual encounter. The same Spirit who had just descended upon him like a dove now drove him forth, as with the impulse of a lion, as upon the wings of an eagle, to endure the great probation. The reason of this is to be found in the Divine intention that the Son of man should partake, not only in our human nature, but in our human experience. He did not shrink even from so keen a contest as that which awaited him. Led, driven, by the Spirit, the Divine Christ met his foe at the appointed spot, as the champion of humanity, in single combat, to submit to the fiercest assaults of Satan.
II In the fewest words is described the scene of the temptation. We often encounter the tempter in the crowded streets and in the thronged assembly. Yet those who, like the monks of Egypt, have fled to the desert to escape his assaults and elude his wiles, have ever found their error. No place is secure from spiritual conflict or from sinful suggestion. But our great Leader chose to wrestle with the adversary alone, without the countenance of human virtue or the sympathy of human friendship to assist him. This was challenging the foe to do his worst. They met face to face. The only companions of Christ in the desert solitude were those wild beasts, whose presence emphasizes the awful loneliness of the spot.
III THE tempter is mentioned by name. Satan was the foe with whom the Saviour engaged in this spiritual conflict. The tempter was brought into immediate contact with the Holy Being upon whom he exercised all his devices in vain. In ordinary cases the enemy of souls employs his emissaries, Perhaps supernatural, certainly in many cases human. Scripture teaches us that our adversary is "as a roaring lion, going about seeking whom he may devour." We, as Christians, should not be ignorant of his devices. Sometimes he is transformed, as it were, into an angel of light. But let us not be deceived; the temptation betrays whence it comes, however it may be disguised by subtlety and craft.
IV The evangelist records THE PERIOD of our Lord"s temptation. It lasted for forty days a period agreeing with the term of very memorable events in the life of our Lord"s illustrious predecessors, Moses and Elijah. A prolonged probation, repeated assaults, variety of spiritual warfare, and a decisive issue, all were rendered possible by the protracted period to which this desert seclusion was extended. The several temptations which occupied this term are recorded in detail by the other evangelists, Matthew and Luke.
1. A temptation appealing to ordinary bodily wants.
2. A temptation appealing to spiritual pride.
3. A temptation appealing to ambition and the love of power.
V St. Mark implies, what the other evangelists explicitly record, our SAVIOUR"S VICTORY.
1. It was gained by a holy character. The prince of this world came, and had nothing in him.
2. By a resolute and determined opposition. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
3. By the use of the weapons of Scripture. If the devil quoted the Word, as he can for his purposes, Christ had ready the appropriate reply, couched in the words of inspiration.
4. It was a complete victory; for the tempter was foiled at every point.
5. Yet it was a victory which did not preserve the assailed from a renewal of attack. The devil left him for a season, only again to return to do his worst and again and finally to fail.
VI The period of conflict and resistance was succeeded by ANGELIC MINISTRATIONS. The Son of God was encompassed by the services of these messengers from heaven, from his birth to his agony, and from his agony to his resurrection and ascension. How natural that those beings who minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation should minister to him who is salvation"s Author and Giver! And it is instructive to find that, as the agency of temptation was not a human agency, so the ministrations which followed were not human ministrations. In what way the angels tended their Lord and did him service, we are not told; whether, as poetic fancy has feigned, by spreading for him a table in the wilderness, or by soothing his spirit by their sympathy as he emerged from the scene of unparalleled conflict and unparalleled victory.
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. Let every man expect temptation; it is the common lot, from which the Son of man himself was not exempt.
2. If temptation does not come in one form it will come in another; the tempter adapts himself to age and sex, temperament and education, position and character.
3. Let the Christian, when tempted, remember that he has the sympathy and may look for the succor of the High Priest, who was tempted as we are, though without sin.
4. Let the Saviour"s mode of meeting and resisting the tempter be prayerfully pondered and copied; the Scriptures furnish the Christian"s armoury, "The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God,
Vers. 12, 13. The temptation.
Great moral problems are suggested by the temptation. Mark does not describe the nature of it, but leaves the imagination and cognate experience of his readers to fill up the spaces, or, having a different object from the other evangelists, he, supposing the details furnished by them well known, contents himself with an epitome. But it is an epitome of a very vivid and pregnant kind. The salient points alluded to by him are
I THE PREDISPOSING CAUSE OF IT. The temptation, singularly enough, follows "straightway" upon the baptism, in such a way as to establish the fact of a close connection between the two events; and that Spirit which crowned with its descent the act of obedience is the direct cause of Christ"s being tempted. Is not this inconsistent with what we learn of God from the Bible? He is not, we are told, tempted of evil, "neither tempteth he any man.
1. It was necessary to the purpose of Christs coming into the world that he should be tempted. As a portion, therefore, of his mediatorial experience and perfecting, it was quite fitting that the Spirit, through whom he had come, should lead him forward to each chief point of trial in his career. It is conceivable that one should approach evil from the side of an evil heart already predisposed to yield. But it belongs to the virtue of Christ"s position as one tempted that he was led into it by the Spirit. It was to translate a part of the meaning of this into familiar speech it was "from the highest motives" that he submitted to temptation.
2. It was not the Spirit that tempted him, but it was through being in the condition induced by the indwelling of the Spirit that he became exposed to temptation in its most terrible forms. It is only as being in a higher spiritual state than that to which one"s circumstances correspond that they can be truly said to tempt him. The greatest temptations are revealed in the highest spiritual experience, even as darkness by light. We can never appreciate the power of Satan until we look at him from a state of holiness and devout illumination.
II THE AGENT OF IT. Mark uses the peculiar word "Satan," instead of "the devil," as in the other Gospels. The choice of this term may have been determined by a desire to emphasize the special character of the devil as "the adversary" whom he was to overthrow, or simply by an instinctive sense that thereby the personality, and the identification of that personality with the historic Satanic principle of revelation, would be made clearer. It was with no secondary being that Jesus wrestled, but with the prince of darkness himself. In such an encounter the conflict must needs be a duel, and even then was it determined beforehand in favor of the Son of God. But the allurements employed were necessarily of the most subtle and grandly representative character. It was a final trial of strength, upon which the future of salvation depended.
III THE ASSOCIATIONS OF IT. The forty days in the wilderness reminded men of the similar fasts of Moses and Elijah. The wild beasts may have been an unconscious reproduction of the conditions of the Paradisaic temptation. The society of the wilderness was of the most contrastive and representative character: the Spirit Satan; wild beasts angels. As to the "wild beasts" (peculiar to Mark), Plumptre says, "In our Lord"s time these might include the panther, the bear, the wolf, the hyena, possibly the lion." The implied thought is partly that their presence added to the terrors of the temptation, partly that in his being protected from them there was the fulfillment of the promise in the very psalm which furnished the tempter with his chief weapon, that the true child of God should trample underfoot "the lion and the adder," the "young lion and the dragon". (Psa_91:13) De Wette considers this to be "a mere pictorial embellishment." Lunge holds that Christ"s attitude is a sovereign and peaceful one towards the beasts: they dare not hurt the Lord of creation, nor do they flee before him. Jesus takes away the curse also from the irrational creation (Romans 8)." As to the angels, we are not to regard them as assisting him in his conflict with Satan, but succouring him in his exhaustion after it. He holds his court, as it were, on the very battle-field. In token of his victory, heaven pours itself forth in its fairest and best on the spot that but a little before was the ante-chamber of hell. M.
Vers. 12, 13. Parallel passages: Mat_4:1-11 Luk_4:1-13. The temptation.
I THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. The above passage of St. Mark, and the parallel passages of the other Gospels, contain the record of one of the most remarkable transactions in the Word of God. It records the temptation of the Son of God. It describes not a fiction but a fact not a phantom scene, such as a poet"s fancy delights to paint, nor a daydream that merely passed through the imagination of the Saviour, but a literal and historical reality. The whole is a narrative of a mysterious yet actual event. It is Satan, personally, that acts the part of the tempter; it is the Saviour, personally, who is tempted; it is the Word of God that is the armoury furnishing the celestial weapons by which the temptation is resisted and the tempter foiled.
II THE FACT OF THE TEMPTATION AND ITS IMPORTANT BEARINGS.
1. Proof of its reality. That the event here recorded was an actual fact, a real transaction, is proved by the different expressions employed by the evangelists. Thus, St. Luke says he "was led by the Spirit;" St. Matthew, that he "was led up of the Spirit;" and St. Mark, that "the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness." Similarly Ezekiel, among the captives on the banks of the Chebar, says of himself, "The Spirit lifted me up, and took me away;" so Philip was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord; so also John was "in the Spirit on the Lord"s day.
2. The Saviour"s first conflict. The temptation was our Lord"s first conflict with that enemy whom he came to contend with and to conquer. It was at the same time the last part of his preparation for his work and warfare. It made him aware of the dangerous devices of the adversary; of the mistakes that would certainly mar, and of the mismanagement which might possibly make his undertaking miscarry. His person, his work, his deportment, were all concerned. In his person identified with the human as well as the Divine, he was debarred from using the resources of the latter to raise him above the common wants and sinless weaknesses of the former; and in remembrance thereof he says, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Self-abnegation, not self-gratification, was the law of his life. In his work he behoved to stand aloof from the ways of the world, eschewing the plans and plots, and all those many means of questionable character, by which men have struggled for dominion and grasped at glory. The spirit of his work was non-conformity to this world; the nature of his kingdom was spiritual, not of this world; the way to reach it was self-sacrifice; the crown was to be gained, but only by the cross. In his deportment there was to be no ostentatious display of close kinship with the eternal Father, no proud presuming on that high relationship, no capricious exercise of Divine power. In due time he would be "declared" the Son of God with power. Accordingly he repels this assault with the strong language of intense abhorrence, if not indignation, saying, "Thou shalt not tempt out and out (peiraseiv) to an extreme altogether intolerable the Lord thy God.
3. The weapon he wielded. Once and again, moreover, the lesson of his childhood the section of the Jewish Law that was written on the frontlet and thus familiar to every Hebrew youth he called to his timely aid, and held up to the tempter as the old standing Scripture (gegraptai , equivalent to "it stands, written"), the ever-abiding truth never to be departed from.
4. The key to the narrative. The key to the entire narrative is contained in the words of the Epistle to the Heb_4:15, "We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin;" and again in the same Epistle, Heb_2:18, "For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." From these Scriptures we learn that the design of Christ"s mission to mankind was twofold; it was not only to make an expiation for our sins by his death, but to be a perfect example for our imitation in his life. He was tempted, therefore, in order that he might be an example to us when called to encounter temptation. He was tempted, moreover, in order that he might be able to sympathize with and succor us when tried and tempted; as the poet has beautifully as well as truly said of himTouched with a sympathy within, He knows our feeble frame; He knows what sore temptations mean, For he has felt the same. Then let our humble faith address His mercy and his power, We shall obtain delivering grace In every trying hour.
5. Forewarned. In the conflict of the Saviour with Satan, as narrated in the Gospels, we have the prototype of, and precedent for, the perfect believer, showing us what manner of adversary we have to contend with, how he fights, how he is resisted, how he is overcome; showing us also the arena on which we have to maintain the struggle, what weapons we must wield, how certain our victory will be when we use those weapons aright, as well as the true source of conquest and of triumph, on which we are to depend. Now, there is much truth in the old proverb, "Forewarned is forearmed;" and if this be true of conflicts where carnal weapons are employed, it is also true of that spiritual conflict which every Christian has to carry on with the great enemy of God and of goodness of the soul and of salvation. Accordingly, the passage under consideration warns us of the adversary and of his devices, that we may not be ignorant of them; of the boldness of his assaults and the mode of his attacks; of what he did in a green tree; and of how much more powerful the fire of his temptation may be expected to be in a dry; of his repeated attacks on him of whom we read, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." How much more severe and repeated attacks of this great adversary may be expected by us, in whom a wicked heart within and a wicked World without combine to render temptation successful! For who among us has not felt the truth of the sentiment"A wicked heart and wicked world, With Satan are combined; Each acts a too successful part In harassing my mind"?
6. Forearmed. Further, the lesson of the passage arms us with weapons of resistance and defense, which, if used duly, diligently, and dutifully, will enable us to resist the devil and force him to flee from us. It implies, moreover, the important duty incumbent on every Christian to guard against all appearance of evil, to check the first risings of evil in the heart, to resist the first suggestions of the evil one, to watch and pray, and apply God"s Word, that we may not enter into temptation. And all this the more, that Satan"s onsets are so daring and his designs so murderous; his arguments so specious and his schemes of ruin so subtle; his plan being our enslavement to himself and sin, while his purpose is to pay us the hard-earned wages of transgression. "What fruit had ye then," asks the apostle, "in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.
III THE FORMS OF THE TEMPTATION IN GENERAL.
1. Striking similarity. There is a remarkable and instructive similarity between the temptation of the first and that of the second Adam; and also a vast dissimilarity. The similarity consists in the means and manner of the temptation; but a world-wide difference is presented in the result. There are three powerful principles of human nature, of which Satan takes advantage, and to which he adapts his temptations. These principles are "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" spoken of in Scripture. These have been called this world"s Trinity. By means of these Satan tempted the first Adam, and succeeded; by the same means he attempted to ensnare the second Adam and failed. In tempting the first Adam he plied him with the lust of the flesh; for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which God had forbidden man to eat, was good for food, and so fitted to gratify the lust of the flesh and lead to the indulgence of carnal appetite. He tried him by the lust of the eyes; for the forbidden tree was pleasant to the eyes, and so adapted to gratify their lust and produce covetousness. He tried him by the pride of life; for it was a tree to be desired to make one wise to make man as God, knowing good and evil, and so suited to the pride of life, prompting and fostering pride of heart. In all this Satan succeeded. He knew the baits to lay, and when and how to lay them. Besides, the first Adam was of the earth, earthy, and we, alas! have all borne his image; for "as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death has passed upon all men for that all have sinned." Now, as Satan had been so successful with the first Adam, it is not to be wondered at that he should try the same mode of procedure in framing his temptation for the second Adam. Accordingly, he tries him first by the lust of the flesh, tempting him to change stones into bread, and so moving him to the indulgence of appetite. Next he tries him by the pride of life, tempting him. to throw himself down from the temple"s pinnacle, and so, in sight of the inhabitants of the holy city, to prove his deity and show forth his glory, employing the upbearing protection of glorious angelic hosts. Thus Satan does his best to move the Saviour to the sin of pride. Once more he tries him by the lust of the eyes, exhibiting to his vision a panoramic view of all the kingdoms of the world, or showing them to him stretched out before his eyes in widespread perspective. He offers him all these and all their glory, and so he endeavors to move him to covetousness. We have here followed the order in which the temptations occur in St. Matthew"s narrative.
2. Dissimilarity of sequel. All Satan"s temptations were in vain as regarded our Lord. The first Adam fell in Eden, a garden the fairest and loveliest ever planted on earth; the second Adam overcame triumphantly on the bleak and dreary wild. A paradise of earthly glory was lost by the first; the paradise of God was secured for us by the second.
3. Special adaptations. But not only did these temptations of our Lord correspond to the three forms of temptation which brought death into our world and all our woe; they correspond to the three portions of man"s composite nature, that is to say, body, soul, and spirit. The body needs bread to satisfy its natural cravings, and the temptation is to procure it independently of Providence. The soul is also appetitive, though in a different direction, and in its outlook contemplates a wide sweep and vast dominion; the temptation is to secure all this at a single bound, overleaping the wearisome way of suffering and self-sacrifice. The middle place between the purely carnal and the purely spiritual is this visual illusion. The spirit rules in man over body and soul, and so liability to pride opens the way to temptation; and here the temptation is to put to the test his eternal Sonship, and to prove by one splendid miracle the truth of his Messianic claims. Thus the appeal was to appetite, to avarice or aggrandizement, and to ambition; in other words, to poverty, power, and pride; following, as we do here, the order of St. Luke"s Gospel.
4. Reason of this difference of arrangement. But why is this difference of arrangement between St. Luke and St. Matthew, the former reversing the relative position of the second and the third temptations as recorded by the latter? Why change the order? Mill"s solution is, perhaps, the right one; at all events, it is very plausible and very probable. It is to the effect that while the flesh is the first avenue of assault in all men, the tempter varies his tactics in the case of the other two, and in accordance with the difference of temperament, leading some by the way of pride to ambition, but others, in reverse order, along the road of ambition to pride.
IV THE FEATURES THAT DISTINGUISH EACH TEMPTATION IN PARTICULAR.
1. Individual traits of the first temptation. The exact gist of the first temptation is, "If thou art the Son of God, exercise thy lordship; if the Son of God, prove thy possession of that power; if the Son of God, what profit is there in this Sonship? What good will this birthright do you?" Now, a compliance with the suggestions of the tempter would have been practical denial of that very Sonship and virtual distrust of the Divine Fatherhood. While we do not and cannot dispense with bread, we must depend on God as Israel of old waited for the word that brought them food. This is in strict accord with the training of the Saviour"s childhood as shadowed forth in that portion of Deuteronomy, namely, Deu_6:4-9, that formed the frontlet already mentioned, and in entire harmony with his own teaching in the sermon on the mount, where he says, "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." The evil one at once Satan the adversary, and Diabolos the accuser now puts forth all his power. The temptation had doubtless continued all those forty days of fasting (peirazomenov , present participle implying such continuance), but now it culminated.
(1) The scene suitable for Satans purpose. The scene of this first temptation is placed by some at Quarantana, but by others it is transferred to Sinai. The former is much the more probable. And so the scene was a district of country that lay eastward of Jerusalem, overlooking the valley of the Jordan, and not far from the place where Jesus had been baptized by John in the waters of that river. It was very wild and very dreary and very desolate. This much might be inferred from the name of " wilderness" by which it was designated, but especially from the additional circumstance supplied by St. Mark, that he was there "with the wild beasts," which laired, no doubt, in the thick brushwood along the banks, or among the caves of the neighboring hills. In addition, therefore, to the natural horrors of the place, were those wild beasts with hungry jaws and glaring eyes and frightful cries, just waiting to seize him as their prey. Few, if any, human feet had trod this particular portion of that wild; no human habitation stood there; no village, or town, or city was to be found in its immediate vicinage. Consequently no supply of the necessaries of life was obtainable there; no food, no refreshment of any kind, was to be had there. Take in connection with all this that our Lord had fasted forty days and forty nights, and we must admit that such place and such a time and such circumstances were the best possible for the success of such a temptation as that with which Satan first plied the Saviour.
(2) Possibilities. doubt it was easy for him who was "declared the Son of God" with power, who could multiply a few loaves and fishes into food for multitudes, who could transform the water-pots of Cana into vessels of wine, to turn the loaf-like stones of the wilderness into actual loaves (artoi) of wholesome bread. Further, it was but natural for him to do so when he was suffering such severe privation, when pained with the pangs of want, when distressed by hunger, which, as the old saying has it, "will breakthrough stone walls." Moreover, was it not right to do this when no other way of relief appeared accessible, and when ordinary means of sustenance were out of reach? Not so, however.
(3) Things ever so plausible not therefore proper. A thing may be ever so plausible in the eyes of man, and yet not proper in the sight of God. Notwithstanding all the plausibility of Satan"s suggestion, had the Saviour yielded he would have been forestalling the providence of God; shown distrust in the provisions of that providence; renounced the exercise of patience; doubted the resources of that heavenly Father who had commissioned the voracious raven to bring flesh to his prophet, who long before had supplied his people"s wants without their sowing or reaping, and that in a wilderness and for forty years, raining down bread from heaven every morning throughout that period round the camp of Israel. Still more, he would have been renouncing that abnegation of self that poverty, humility, suffering, and sorrow, which were all, and more, included in the conditions of the covenant. He would have put aside the bitter cup of suffering without raising it to his lips, much less draining it to the dregs. He would have faltered at the first step, and so defeated the whole undertaking. Interests of greatest moment were at stake: the life or death of millions was in the balance; the weal or woe of countless human beings was depending on the decision of that moment; souls immortal were to be saved or sacrificed by the action of that hour.
(4) The Saviour victorious. Angels, we doubt not, looked to see the issue, perhaps in terrible suspense; but it lasted not an instant. The conflict in this case is scarcely commenced, when the Son of God comes off the conqueror and Satan is repelled. The sword of the Spirit was the instrument of victory. The tempter is reminded that man is not dependent on bread alone; there are many other things called into existence by God for human food, and everything so appointed, be it root, or fruit, or berry, or tuber, or plant, or acorn, will, by the Divine blessing, serve the end. Besides, while the body is still craving and saying, "Give, give," there is another part of man, which must be supplied with spiritual nourishment, and which it is death to neglect. The soul lacks spiritual food. It feeds on the hidden and heavenly manna.
(5) Practical use of this first temptation.
(a) To see the subtlety of Satans snares. We may now look at the practical bearing of this first temptation expressed in the words, "Speak a word of power in order that these stones may become bread or loaves speak them by a word of power into bread;" though ina with the subjunctive is not for the infinitive after eipe in the sense of command, but as Stolz translates, "Sprich ein Machtwort damit dicse Steine Brod werden." If we reflect on the antecedents and the accompaniments of this temptation, we cannot conceive of anything more specious. The time was that moment when he began to be a hungered; when the sinless cravings of appetite began to be felt; when, in instructive parallelism with Moses at the promulgation of the Law from Sinai, and with Elias at its restoration on Carmel, the Saviour at the fulfillment of the Law and the introduction of the gospel fasted forty days and forty nights. By entering in this manner on the activities of his great mediatorial work, he teaches us, by the way, the importance of retiring for fasting, meditation, and prayer before commencing any very important duty in the service of God. The time was thus well chosen; for when the Saviour, being subject to all the sinless infirmities of humanity, began to feel the gnawings of hunger, just then Satan, who is as vigilant as he is malignant and murderous, took advantage of the moment at which appetite, after being so long whetted, had become keenest, and urged the change of stones into bread to meet the wants of nature. But the place as well as the time appeared to second the speciousness and seeming propriety of this suggestion. It was just such a place as that of which the Psalmist says, "They wandered in a wilderness in a solitary way... Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them." Nothing eatable could be obtained; no esculent of any kind was to be met with. The circumstances also added to the speciousness of Satan"s suggestion, and seemed to render the working of a miracle as proper as it was plausible. The Saviour had been declared and openly acknowledged as the Son of God. He is alone in a desert, hungry, without any possibility of supply, and yet "the Son of God with power." In such a case it was natural enough and reasonable enough to all human seeming for Satan to say, "If you really possess the power, why not exert it at a time when it is so much needed, and in a place where it is so indispensable, no suitable supply being otherwise procurable? If the Son of God, and in want, why not utter a creative word and relieve that want? If invested with sufficient ability, why not Speak an omnific word and display that ability? If capable, why not work a miracle when it is so necessary, and when there can be nothing wrong in the act; for to turn stones into loaves of bread is in itself no more amiss than to turn water into wine?" Thus tempted Satan. Thus by plausible and powerful reasonings he backed his temptations.
(b) To shun those snares is the next practical use to be made of this temptation. However specious and subtle, it is our interest as well as our duty to shun them; and the more specious and subtle they are, the more needful it is to be on our guard against them. Oh, how subtle the tempter is! He takes advantage of our circumstances, he takes occasion from our wants, he adapts his assaults to our weaknesses. The poor and needy he tempts to discontent, sometimes even to dishonesty. Are you poor? Then, says Satan, scruple not to supply the necessities of nature. Are you unable to rise in the world by fair means? Then use foul. Are you in low circumstances? Then try the tricks of trade. Are you necessitous? Then employ dishonesty in your dealings, or resort to fraud in some shape, or even have recourse to force. Are you given to appetite? Then Satan will tempt to excess in food, or drink, or both. "Use the world," says God. "Abuse it," says Satan. "Be temperate in all things," says God. "Never mind," says Satan, "live while live you can, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. His temptations too, as we have seen, are most plausible. He often seems to be urging us to what is good and proper, or even to what tends to promote the glory and honor of God. But the more plausible a temptation is, and the more appearance of good there is in it, the more dangerous generally it is, and the more destructive it may prove. In the temptation we are considering, had the Son of God yielded, and by miracle turned stones into bread, however justifiable the act at first sight appears, besides betraying distrust in Providence and disregard of the Divine will, he would have failed in the exercise of submission, and so in setting an example to his followers. God will have his children, when they are in want, to wait on him and wait for him; Satan tempts them to do neither. God assures his people that he is merciful and gracious that he knows our frame, and will supply our wants in his own good time and way; Satan tempts to hard thoughts of God, and to doubt or distrust his paternal care. God witnesseth with our spirits that we are his children, just as he had done to the eternal Son; Satan strives to weaken that testimony, and tempts us to question our sonship. God tells us that afflictions not only consist with, but come from, his fatherly hand, for "whom he loveth he chasteneth;" Satan tempts us to regard them as evidences that God has forgotten or forsaken us.
(c) Scripture is the sword of the Spirit we must wield. Now consider the Saviour"s reply to this first temptation. He might have met the tempter with a positive declaration, "I am the Son of God." He might have asserted his lordship over him. He might have subdued him instantly by Almighty power. But in so doing he would only have left us an exhibition of omnipotence to astonish us, not an example to attract us. On the contrary, he takes away the ground of the temptation by appealing to the Divine Word. His answer was, "It is written stands written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but, by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," or more simply, as in St. Luke, "by every word of God." Thus he put honor on the Divine Word, and at the same time put into our hand a weapon of greatest power for our individual defense. He shows, moreover, that, though man ordinarily lives by bread, yet that any word proceeding out of the mouth of God, anything created by God"s word and by that same word commanded to be used for food, will serve the purpose. "He can either," says Bishop Hall in his "Contemplations," "sustain without bread, as he did Moses and Elias; or with a miraculous bread, as the Israelites with manna; or send ordinary means miraculously, as food to his prophet by the ravens; or miraculously multiply ordinary means, as the meal and oil to the Sareptan widow." Christ, therefore, needed not to turn stones into bread; he only needed to trust in his heavenly Father for a seasonable and suitable supply. Hence we learn that, while bread is the staff of life, God"s blessing is the staff of bread. We may want bread, and yet be nourished by some other means; we may have bread, and not be satisfied. In our greatest abundance we must not think of living without God; in our greatest indigence we must learn to live upon God. Ordinary means of succor and support may fail or be cut off; the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no meat; yet are we to rejoice in the Lord and joy in the God of our salvation.
(d) Spiritual life needs nourishment suited to it. Bread, by the Divine blessing, supports the life of the body; but there is a higher style of life that needs for its sustenance more than bread, and which bread alone cannot maintain. There is the life of the soul, the life of the immortal spirit; that spiritual life depends for support on every word of God. "Thy words were found," says the prophet, "and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart;" and Job says, "I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food;" while the Saviour himself says, in reference to the same life, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." And if we would live this truer, higher, nobler life, we "must all eat the same spiritual meat," feeding on the Word of God and following the will of God.
2. The special character of the second temptation. This second temptation is an appeal to avarice or aggrandizement or covetousness. As Moses saw the land of promise from the top of Pisgah, so Satan brings the Saviour to "an exceeding high mountain." A mountain is still pointed out as the mount of the temptation. Its name is Quarantana, and its height nearly two thousand feet. "It is distinguished," says Kitto, "for its sere and desolate aspect even in this gloomy region of savage and dreary sights. From its summit Satan shows him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Whether by "world" is to be understood the Holy Land, then divided into several petty principalities; or the Roman empire, comprising many conquered kingdoms as its provinces; or the world in its widest sense, we stop not to inquire. Neither do we attempt to explain what power of optics commanded such a prospect, or how the horizon widened and widened till the world, with its political divisions as well as physical features, spread out, before the two solitary spectators on you mountain-top, like an unfolded chart; or how especially all this was accomplished in a moment or second (literally, p oint) of time. The Scripture states the fact, and we believe it; the how of it we are not curious to discover, nor do we think it necessary to define. Some think the whole subjective; we take the whole to be objective. Milton, it is true, speaks of the specular mount, and amplifies the scene descried from it, as a poet and a scholar; and there is good reason to believe that his realistic interpretation is in accordance with Scripture representation, as he sings"Here thou behold"st Assyria, and her empire"s ancient bounds, Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on As far as Indus east, Euphrates west, And oft beyond, to south the Persian bay, And inaccessible, the Arabian drouth.
(1) Attempt to realize the stupendous spectacle. The imaginings of the poet had their foundations in fact. Looking to the right, they saw the cities and countries peopled by the numerous children of the East the once powerful empire of Persia, the equally powerful and still more ancient Babylonia, the distant India, and the remote Chinese. Looking northward, they saw the nomadic hordes of Scythia stretching far away towards the frozen arctic regions. Westward they saw the many provinces conquered by Roman valor and then subject to Roman rule, the sunny shores and isles of Greece, the amalgamated races that peopled the Italian peninsula, the savage tribes of Germany, the gallant men of Gaul, and the far-off inhabitants of Britain. Southward they saw the unconquered Arabs, the polished Egyptians, the sunburnt dwellers of Ethiopia, the Lybians bordering on the desert, and other sable sons of Africa. "All these shall be yours at once, and without an effort on your part, if you fall down and worship me, or rather do homage before me.
(2) Satan"s title. What claim, we may well ask, had Satan on these kingdoms? What right dared he to assert over them? His claim was that of usurped dominion, for it is only by usurpation and for a little space that he is god of this world. No doubt he affirms, "It has been entrusted to me;" and he is called "the prince of this world," and "the prince of the power of the air" His right is only, however, that which sinful men have given him that of slaves to a tyrant master conceded to him by those whom he leads captive at his will. "Those myriad idolaters are mine, he said. "Those unbelieving Jews are mine. Those sinners of every tribe, and race, and name are mine; they are of their father the devil, and my bidding they.are prompt and prepared to do." Thus spake, we may conceive the usurper Thank God! his surpation will one day end, his works shall be destroyed, he himself for ever bruised and his power broken. But he presumed to add, To thee will I give this power and all the glory of them.
(3) His disingenuousness. He showed the fair side of all. He kept away in the background the foul ways and sinful means by which kingdoms often have been won, the bloody battles, the cruel massacres, the wicked plots, the diplomatic schemes, by which crowns have been gained; the cares that attend them, the anxieties that perplex them, the thorns that line them, for often "uneasy rests the head that wears a crown." All this Satan is ready to give. But why act so disingenuously? Why not state the drawbacks? Ah! this is never Satan"s way. He shows the best part of the picture; the darker background he keeps out of view. He exhibits the fascinations of sin; he conceals its bitterness. He recounts its pleasures, not its pains; its seductions, not its sorrows; its allurements, not its sufferings and its sadness. Besides, his promises are lies. He never keeps his word; he never means to do so; he never performs his promise.
(4) The Saviour"s indignant rejection of Satans offer. No wonder the Saviour, wearied of Satan"s intrusions, of his impertinence, of his insolence, of his insults as well as assaults, repels him rudely, saying," Get thee behind me, Satan for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
(5) Satan"s dupes and dependants. Satan is, no doubt, a mighty prince; his hosts are the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, his bait the love of power. The world-rulers (kosmokratorev), the Pharaohs, the Herods, the Caesars, snatched at that bait, accepting the evil one as their master. And so he tempts the Saviour too, as though he said, "Why not be a king like other kings? Let your kingdom be of this world; I object not to its being the greatest and the mightiest; otherwise I will oppose thee." Thus far Satan. But the Holy One again repels the evil. one by Scripture. Again he appeals to the lesson of his childhood the words of the frontlet, recognizing the allowance due to God.
(6) Practical lesson from the second temptation. Satan is still lavish in his offers and liberal in pressing them on all. He offers the world, its praises, its profits, its pleasures; but he must have a quid pro quo, a full equivalent. He insists on your making a return for his favors, on your reciprocating his benefactions. He wants you to worship him. He will have you sacrifice your soul in his service. Disguise it as he may, he will have nothing else and will accept nothing less. Satan is proverbially good to his own; but that goodness is only seeming, and even in its seeming short. The way of duty is the way of safety. For though evil triumphed for a time, though the day of its downfall were far distant or not to be dreamt of, though there were no such thing as retribution, and though no period of redress appeared likely; still to be guided by the Divine Word, to imitate the Saviour, and to render allegiance to God alone, will be found in the end the happiest, the wisest, and the best.
3. Nature of the third temptation. It is an appeal to ambition or pride. Some, however, are of opinion that this is a temptation to an experiment in order to test whether the Divine presence or the Divine protection pertained to Sonship, rather than a temptation to an effort in order to gain power and popularity with the people. In favor of this view is the history from which the tempter is answered. The people had called in question the Divine presence, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" They required a supernatural proof to assure them of it. Similar conduct on the part of the Saviour to that of Israel on the occasion referred to would have been sinful distrust. Here, as afterwards, he could have bidden to his side legions of angels; but in either case he forbore. Obedient trust in God and determined opposition to Satan were the principles that guided the conduct of the Saviour, and that ultimately gained the day.
(1) The acme of Satan"s subtlety. The pinnacle or battlement of the temple was, doubtless, the royal portico built by Herod and overhanging the ravine of the Kedron." It stood on the very edge of the precipice and towered up to an immense height. From the top of this giddy eminence Josephus tells us that no eye could see the bottom. "Cast thyself down," said Satan, "and the Jews, who are on the look-out for a temporal prince, will take you at once, and make you their king, and render ready homage to thy scepter. Cast thyself down, and other nations, who are all expecting some great potentate to appear in order to usher in an age of unexampled blessing, will all make common cause with them, and form one united and world-wide empire. Thus Jew and Gentile, in happy harmony, shall bind the diadem of royalty round thy brow, and so crown thee Lord and ruler of all. In any case," says Satan, "and whatever be the result, you lose nothing by the experiment. You run no risk by the attempt; for is it not written, "He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee"?
(2) Suppression of Scripture. Ah! here is the masterpiece of the evil one. Here we see how he can adapt himself to the exigencies of every case. Here we see his skill in imitation. Here, after the example of the Saviour, he appeals to Scripture. "What," says an old divine quaintly, almost quizzically-" what is this I see? Satan himself, with a Bible under his arm and a text in his mouth." But then he misquotes by suppressing part of the sentence, and so altering the sense of the whole. Undoubtedly God had promised," He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways;" but this latter clause Satan found it convenient to omit. Thereby we are taught that the way of duty is the way of safety; wisdom"s ways are ways of pleasantness and paths of peace. When we walk in these ways God has promised to keep us safe. Off them we jeopardize ourselves every hour. "Not so," says Satan. "Go where you like, walk as you like, take my word for it, you are safe." Thus Satan misquotes, misinterprets, and misapplies. Thus he said to our first parents, in direct contravention of God"s word, "Ye shall not surely die." Thus was he "a liar and a murderer from the beginning." Thus he continues to lead men blindfold to the brow of the precipice, and bids them cast themselves down, telling them there is no danger, and assuring them of safety. Thus he plunges men in misery. Thus he brings them to perdition. Thus he sinks them in the deep abyss.
(3) His tactics are still the same. "Cast yourself down," he says to some; "sin is an easy and safe descent. The way of virtue is hard and uphill; don"t trouble yourself about it. Cast yourself down, wallow in your beloved lust, take your fill of your besetting sin; God is too merciful to mind it, or at least to punish it. Cast yourself down before the god of gold, like Israel before the golden calf, that you may be elevated in worldly rank and be exalted among thy fellows." Again, to children of God he says," Cast yourselves down. The gospel mystery of sanctification is slow work and a roundabout way; try penances, fastings, macerations, pilgrimages, will-worship, and thus expedite it." Perhaps he waxes bolder and says to another, "You are a child of grace: once in grace always in grace; you may indulge in sin with impunity, or that grace may abound, or that God may get glory and you more grace by repentance. Cast yourself down; the sin you dread is a trifle is it not a little one?" These are only a few specimens of Satan"s subtle snares and manifold devices. To those in high places he whispers, "Cast yourselves down. Place is before principle; expediency rather than consistency." To others again, "Cast yourselves down. Become slaves to luxury, or sensuality, or vice; your means warrant it, the circumstances justify it. Cast yourselves down. Thousands do worse, while few do better, and it will be all the same in the end.
(4) The third repulse. That pinnacle was a high place, and high places are slippery places; they are difficult places; they are dangerous places. Comparing this temptation with the former, we are reminded of the wise man"s words, "Give me neither poverty nor fiches." Our Lord"s reply repulsed Satan in this quarter also. It was, "Thou shalt not tempt literally, out and out, or to an extreme the Lord thy God." You are not to run unbidden into danger; you are not to run against the thick bosses of Jehovah"s buckler; you are not to pray, "Lead me not into temptation," and then dash into it; you are not to venture into a perilous position, where neither necessity, nor Providence, nor duty calls you; you are not to plead the covenant of God while you disregard its conditions; you are not to appropriate promises that in no way apply to your character or conduct.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
1. The battle of life is largely a battle for daily bread. In far northern regions it is extremely difficult; in the tropics it is exceedingly easy. It has been well remarked that neither extreme has conduced much to the world"s progress; it is for the most part the dwellers in the temperate zones, where labour for the support of life is only ordinarily difficult equally removed from the extremes of severity and facility, that have helped onward the march of civilization, of science, of art; in a word, human improvement and human culture.
2. As we are to watch as well as pray to avoid temptation, so we are to labour as well as pray for daily bread labouring as if all depended on our work, praying as though work formed no factor in the process.
3. The first temptation tended to carnal appetite and distrust of Providence; the last, to ambition and proud presumption on the Father"s protection. The first presupposes want; the last, abundance. The first teaches a lesson to the poor; the last, to the rich. And just as the wilderness was suitable to the first, so the world-famed city was a proper place for the last; for Jerusalem was the glory of Palestine, the pride of all the land, while "the temple was the glory of Jerusalem, the pinnacle the highest point of the temple.
4. Observe the extremes in Satan"s temptations the first was to despair and to distrust in Providence; the last, to pride and presumption. The tenor of the final suggestion was, "Cast thyself down. If thou art supported by his providence, thou wilt be sustained by his protection. Cast thyself down. When people see thee fling thyself from the high precipice and receive no hurt, all men will then own thy Godhead and acknowledge thy Divine commission. Jerusalem and the Jews will acknowledge it and admit thou art more than man even " the Messenger of the covenant," coming suddenly and sublimely to his temple. The work of Messiahship shall be facilitated and shortened; while every one will be at once convinced of thy claims. Besides, when, or where, or how, could a better opportunity be had for declaring publicly and powerfully thy glory and thy Godhead, thy dignity and design?" And yet the arch-tempter was signally foiled and the Saviour gloriously victorious. He bruised Satan"s head; and in Christ and through Christ we even we shall, by Divine grace, be enabled to bruise Satan, and that speedily, under our feet.
5. Satan, having completed every temptation, that is, every typical form of temptation, as though all temptations are resolvable into one of the three, "departed from him," but only for a season, or rather until an opportunity (acri kairou), that is to say, until another opportunity should occur or some new opportunity present itself, either by way of suffering or situation negative endurance or positive enticement.
6. Angels ministered to him. The necessity for this arose from the desert district in which he found himself. The statement in St. Mark"s narrative that "he was with the wild beasts" is generally understood to imply that the region was wild in the extreme, desolate, and full of terrors, like Virgil"s "Vitam in sylvis inter deserta ferarum lustra domosque traho;" may it not rather, or also, assign a reason for the ministering of angels mentioned in the next clause, as rendered absolutely necessary from the total absence of all human help and distance from all the resources of civilized life?
INTERVAL. Between the temptation, according to St. Mark"s brief record, and our Lord"s Galilean ministry many things had taken place, as we learn from the evangelist John. Into that interval a Judaean ministry of rather uncertain duration and of much importance must be interjected. We are dependent entirely on the fourth Gospel for the narrative of that ministry. But, though unrecorded by the synoptists, it is nevertheless implied and referred to by them.
CONNECTING LINKS. In the intervening period the following circumstances transpired:
1. The testimony of the Baptist to Jesus, already referred to; the adhesion of two of John"s disciples to Jesus, Andrew bringing his brother Simon to him; our Lord"s return to Galilee, where Philip findeth Nathanael and bringeth him to Jesus; the marriage in Cana.
2. Our Lord"s first Passover at Jerusalem as the Son of God, the Messiah promised to the fathers, together with the expulsion of the traders; his discourse with Nicodemus, who came to him by night; his leaving Jerusalem, but remaining some time longer in Judaea; further, a final testimony of the Baptist; his setting out for Galilee after John"s imprisonment; his discourse with the woman of Samaria at Jacob"s well, near Sychar, as he passed through Samaria on his way to Galilee; his return to Cana and cure of the nobleman"s son at Capernaum; his rejection at Nazareth and settled abode at Capernaum. J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness.
Mar_1:12-13
The Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness.
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The temptation of Christ
An awful and mysterious passage in the life of One whose tastes and habits were the very opposite of those of the prophet of the desert-One who loved men and cities, free social intercourse, and scenes of active usefulness. No sooner does Jesus undergo the high consecration of baptism than, instead of stepping forth into public life, He flees to solitude. We cannot unveil the deep mystery of this season of thought and trial. But may we not suppose that when the Spirit descended on Christ, He who had so suffered the limitations of humanity as already to have needed to grow in wisdom and strength, may first have realized, in His human thought, the tremendous import of His mission, and at the same time may first have grasped the superhuman powers with which to work miracles? If so, overwhelmed with the vision before Him, He may well have sought solitude to meditate on His great work, to obtain inward mastery of His own stupendous powers, and to wrestle with and conquer the fearful temptations that would rise up, urging Him to desecrate those powers to selfish purposes.
I. Christ was tempted. He was not only tested as by a touchstone, but by the more searching ordeal of a direct persuasion to evil. In all there is a lower as well as a higher nature, a self-interest as well as a conscience of duty. If Christ was tempted, it follows that
(1) no innocence and no strength can make a soul unassailable by temptation, and
(2) to feel the force of temptation is no proof of guilty compliance.
II. Christ was tempted by Satan. Temptation arises from without as well as from our own hearts. This is why the purest mind is liable to it.
III. Christ was tempted at the commencement of His mission. The greatest obstacles often beset the first steps of a new course-in attempting a new work, in first attacking a bad habit, in entering on the Christian life. This tests genuineness and teaches humility, self-diffidence, and reliance on God. It is a great thing to begin the Christian campaign with a victory in the first battle.
IV. Christ was tempted when under high spiritual influences. The Spirit driveth Him.
1. God permits, nay, requires, us to pass through the fire of temptation.
2. Great spiritual elation is often followed by deep depression.
3. New endowments bring new dangers. They who stand highest are in danger of falling lowest.
V. Christ was tempted in the wilderness.
1. John found the desert the best scene for his life and work, Christ found it a region of evil influences. As one mans paradise may be the purgatory of another, so the haven of refuge of one may be his brothers most dangerous snare.
2. Christ was tempter in a solitary place. We cannot escape temptation by fleeing from the world; we carry the world with us to our retreat. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
The wilderness
This wilderness has been identified, by the voice of tradition, in the Greek and Latin Churches, as that wild and lonely region between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, called in modern geography, Quarantania. It is an extensive plateau, elevated to a considerable height above the plain of Jericho and the west bank of the Jordan; and hence the literal accuracy of the expression in St. Matthew, that Jesus was led up into the wilderness. Travellers have described it as a barren, sterile waste of painful whiteness, shut in on the west by a ridge of grey limestone hills, moulded into every conceivable shape; while on the east the view is closed by the gigantic wall of the Moab mountains, appearing very near at hand, but in reality a long way off, the deception being caused by the nature of the intervening ground, which possesses no marked features, no difference of colour on which to fix the eye for the purpose of forming an estimate of distance. Over this vast expanse of upland country there are signs of vegetation only in two or three places, where winter torrents have scooped out a channel for themselves, and stimulate year after year into brief existence narrow strips of verdure along their banks. The monotony of the landscape and the uniformity of its colouring are varied only when the glaring afternoon sun projects the shadows of the ghostly rocks across the plain, or, at rare intervals, when a snowy cloud, that seems as if born of the hills themselves, sails across the deep blue sky and casts down on the desolate scene the cool dark mantle of its shade. A more dreary and lonely scene it is impossible to imagine. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Man led into temptation for his good
Here we learn that God is our Leader into all things which are good for our souls, and that even temptation may be good for us. The same Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness leads us thither too.
1. Christ went into a desert to make expiation for the sins which are committed in society.
2. He went to endure fasting for mans luxury; to suffer want for mans extravagance.
3. He went into the wilderness immediately after His baptism, teaching us thereby that those who are baptized should die from sin and rise again unto righteousness.
4. It is absolutely necessary for us all sometimes to stand aside from the busy crowd, and to seek quiet and retirement for prayer and self-examination, without which our spiritual life must grow feebler and fainter till it dies. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.)
Temptation follows blessing
Note that it was immediately after His baptism our Lord was led into the wilderness to be tempted. Satan, like a pirate, sets on a ship that is richly laden; so when a soul hath beer laden with spiritual comforts, now the devil will be shooting at him to rob him of all. The devil envies to see a soul feasted with spiritual joy. Josephs parti-coloured coat made his brethren envy him and plot against him. After David had the good news of the pardon of his sin (which must needs fill with consolation), Satan presently tempted him to a new sin in numbering the people; and so all his comfort leaked out and was spilt. (T. Watson.)
Satanic temptations
I. That they come to the best of men.
1. To test the work and progress of their moral character.
2. To impart to moral character new traits of beauty.
II. That they often follow times of happy communion with God.
1. These altered conditions of soul are often sudden.
2. They are disciplinary.
3. They are unwelcome.
III. That they mark important crises in the spiritual history of the good.
1. They aid self-interpretation.
2. They give insight into the problem of sin.
3. They afford an opportunity of asserting moral supremacy.
IV. That they are frequently followed by the soothing ministries of heaven.
1. These ministries are angelic.
2. They are personal.
3. They are opportune.
4. They are soothing.
Lessons:
1. That temptation should not cause us to depreciate the worth of our moral character.
2. That temptation should increase our knowledge of self, and enhance the progress of our being.
3. That the devotions of the good should prepare them for struggle with evil.
4. That solitude is no safeguard against temptation.
5. That heavenly ministries are at the disposal of a tempted, but prayerful, soul.
6. That man has the power to resist the strongest opposition of hell. (Joseph S. Exell, M. A.)
The temptation of Christ
It was not a vision but an actual occurence between a personal Saviour and a personal devil.
I. The circumstances.
1. The time. After His baptism. Before His public ministry.
2. The place. It was solitary, dreary, dangerous.
3. The Divine agency. Appointed and regulated by God.
4. Angelic ministrations.
II. The details.
1. To the use of unlawful means of extrication from difficulties.
2. To presumption on Divine support under self-sought dangers.
3. To spiritual idolatry.
III. Its uses.
1. It tried His character as a man and as a Mediator.
2. It showed His power to overcome the devil.
3. It qualified Him to sympathize with His people.
IV. Its lessons.
1. From the contrast between the issues of the temptation in paradise and of that in the wilderness.
2. From the instrument which was used in repelling the temptation. The sword of the Spirit.
3. From the hopes it inspires of victory over all our enemies. (Various.)
Jordan exchanged for the wilderness
From the baptism He went up, as it were, towards God as the Beloved Son; but from the temptation He comes earthward as the Son of Man. The Jordan lies on the heavenly, the wilderness on the earthly, side of Christ. There is a river, but there is no wilderness, in heaven. (Dr. Parker.)
Christ tempted of the devil
I. Christ, having received the Spirit, ever after lived under His immediate guidance.
1. Everything that Christ said and did expressed the mind of the Spirit. In this respect He is an example.
2. The intensity with which Christ acted is expressed by the word driveth.
3. The Spirit, as a leader, often takes into the wilderness,
II. Christ having been formally anointed to His offices, prepares Himself by fasting and prayer for His work. It was after Christ bad spent forty days in this employment that He was tempted. He afterwards acted in the same manner. Our example.
III. Christ having retired into the wilderness, He allowed Himself to be tempted of the devil.
IV. The temptation of Christ followed close upon the enjoyment of the highest religious privileges.
V. Christ was tempted in a place into which the Spirit had led Him.
VI. It is stated that Christ, during His stay in the wilderness, was with the wild beasts.
VII. On this and other occasions angels ministered to Christ. (Expository Outlines.)
Satanic agency
I. Satan, the prince of devils. Numbers of his agents. His apostasy, and ruin of man. His power on earth, a kingdom. Organized. Long almost undisputed.
II. Christ came to dispute his authority. Took an affecting view of human vassalage.
III. Satan, aware of His advent, undertook to conduct His temptation. Made His life an incessant conflict.
IV. The defeat of Satan quite reconcilable with his present prevalence.
V. Called a spirit, to excite our vigilance. An unclean spirit, to awaken our antipathy. His influence over the heart, great. But only exercised with our consent.
VI. The period of his reign limited. (J. Harris, D. D.)
Solitude
I. Its perils. Eve was tempted when she was alone; the suicide succumbs when he is pushed with the last degree of loneliness; the darkest thoughts of the conspirator becloud the mind when he has most deeply cut the social bond; when man is alone he loses the check of comparison with others; he miscalculates his force, and deems too little the antagonism that force may excite.
II. Its advantages. The risks of solitude are in proportion to its value. Man cannot reach his full stature in the market place or in association with the excited throng. The desert was to Christ a holy place after the initial battle. In the first instance He was led up into it to be tempted; but often afterwards to be comforted. (Ecce Deus.)
Life not all wilderness
Some people see nothing in the world but the wilderness, the devil, and the wild beasts. Resist these temptations, and thou wilt find it full of angels. (R. Glover.)
Tempted of Satan.
The number forty in Scripture
The number forty seems to have had a special mystical meaning. Nine instances in the Bible of events which occurred for forty days or years.
1. The Flood.
2. Bodies embalmed forty days before burial.
3. Israels wanderings.
4. Goliaths defiance of Israel.
5. Elijah fasted.
6. Ezekiel bore the iniquity of Judah.
7. Repentance of Nineveh.
8. Our Lords temptation.
9. Interval between resurrection and ascension. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.)
Temptation
The word temptation has three meanings in the Bible.
1. A trial of our faith, to bring out some hidden virtue. Thus Abraham was tempted of God.
2. A provoking to anger. Thus we tempt God (Psa_95:9; Psa_106:14). So we say of a provoking person that he has a trying temper.
3. A leading into sin. Thus we are tempted of the devil. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.)
Why does God allow us to be tempted
1. To strengthen our faith. The unused limb becomes weak and tender; the neglected instrument of music gets out of tune; the untouched weapon loses its keen edge. So, many a man knows nothing of self-denial until God tries him by a great sorrow.
2. To bring out latent good qualities.
3. To make us watchful. We must prove our armour. We must learn our weak points.
4. That He may one day give us our reward (Jam_1:12). (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.)
Christs susceptibility to temptation
Did Christ, then, merely suffer in the wilderness as any other man has done? Suffering is a question of nature. The educated man suffers more than the uneducated man; the poet probably suffers more than the mathematician; the commanding officer suffers more in a defeat than the common soldier. The more life, the more suffering: the billows of sorrow being in proportion to the volume of our manhood. Now Jesus Christ was not merely a man, He was Man; and by the very compass of His manhood, He suffered more than any mortal can endure. The storm may pass as fiercely over the shallow lake as over the Atlantic, but by its very volume the latter is more terribly shaken. No other man had come with Christs ideas; in no other man was the element of self so entirely abnegated; no other man had offered such opposition to diabolic rule; all these circumstances combine to render Christs temptation unique, yet not one of them puts Christ so far away as to prevent us finding in His temptation unfailing solace and strength. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Satans opportunity
No sooner was Christ out of the water of baptism than He is thrust into the fire of temptation. So David, after his anointing, was hunted as a partridge upon the mountains. Israel is no sooner out of Egypt than Pharaoh pursues them. Hezekiah had no sooner left that solemn passover than Sennacherib comes up against him. St. Paul is assaulted with vile temptations after the abundance of his revelations; and Christ teaches us, after forgiveness of sins, to look for temptations, and to pray against them. While Jacob would be Labans drudge and packhorse, all was well; but when once he began to flee, he makes after him with all his might. All was quiet enough at Ephesus before St. Paul came thither; but then there arose no small stir about the way. All the while our Saviour lay in His fathers shop, and meddled only with carpenters chips, the devil troubled Him not; but now that He is to enter more publicly upon His office of mediatorship, the tempter pierceth His tender soul with many sorrows by solicitation to sin. (John Trapp.)
Satans wiliness
The lion is said to be boldest in the storm. His roar, it is said, never sounds so loud as in the pauses of the thunder; and when the lightning flashes, brightest are the flashes of his cruel eye. Even so he who goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, often seizes the hour of natures greatest distress to assault us with his fiercest temptations. He tempted Job when he was bowed down with grief. He tempted Peter when he was weary with watching and heart broken with sorrow. And here, too, he tempts Jesus Christ when He is faint with hunger. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Subtlety of Satans temptations
Satan will lie in wait for the Christian in his time of weakness, even as the wild beasts do at the water side for the cattle coming to drink. Nay, when having resisted manfully, the Christian has driven off the enemy, he should look well that he be not wounded by the vanquished foe, who often makes a Parthian retreat. (J. G. Pilkington.)
Temptation not necessarily hurtful
It is when a child of God is fullest of grace; when he has been declared to be a son, even a beloved son of God; when he has made a public profession of Christianity, that he is most of all exposed to temptation. It seems strange, at first thought, that it should be so; but a little reflection dissipates the strangeness. Let me try to illustrate this. A toolmaker, I suppose, has finished an instrument, but it is not yet sent forth. Why Because he has not tested it. Well! Enter we his workshop. You look in and observe the process. Your first impression is, he is going to break it. But it is not so. Testing is not an injury. The perfect weapon comes out the stronger, and receives the stamp that will carry it over the world. Even so the testing and trying of the Christian is not an injury. He who has formed the believer for Himself is not going to break or destroy the work, the beautiful work of His own hands. He is purifying, fitting, fashioning, polishing. Carry this along with you, and you will understand how it comes about that at the very moment of your being full of the Holy Ghost, at the very moment of your announced sonship, you are most violently assailed. (A. B. Grosart, D. D.)
I. Sonship does not exempt from temptation.
II. Temptation does not invalidate sonship.
III. Temptation, rightly considered, makes sonship a life and power. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Our relation to Adams temptation and to Christs
Adam yielded; Christ overcame. Adams sin contains all the sin of his children; Christs victory contains all the victories of His people. There was the vice of all sinning in the one, and there was the virtue of all conquering in the other, When we sin we go down to that sin by the same steps which Adam trod, and when we foil the tempter, we do so with the same weapons that Christ wielded. (Dean Vaughan.)
Why men are tempted
Man is like iron fresh from the mine. The worker of the rude metal will thrust a crude bar of it into the blazing furnace, and turn it hither and thither in the glowing fires, and then lay it on the anvil, and beat it with innumerable blows, and crush it between inexorable rollers, and plunge it into the smothering charcoal, and turn and thrust and temper it, till at length it is no longer the hard, brittle, half earthy material, but something different-tougher, stronger, purer, and more valuable. He does this that the worthless may become useful, and that iron ore may be converted into steel. (S. Greg.)
An important interview
At one oclock precisely on the 25th of June, 1807, two boats put off from opposite banks of the Niemen, at the little town of Tilsit. They rowed towards a raft in the middle of the river. Out of each stepped a single individual, and the two met in a small wooden apartment on the raft, while cannon thundered from either shore, and the shout of the great armies on either side drowned the roar of artillery. The two persons were the Emperors Napoleon and Alexander, met to arrange the destinies of the human race. But how vastly more important the interview of the text; in the persons employed in it, in the nature of the transaction, in the result. (T. Collins.)
Good stronger than evil
Satan would convert Christ; darkness would blot out the light, or throw at least a shadow on its brightness; foulness would cast a stain on the white robe of purity; evil would triumph over good. But no I Light is stronger than darkness; good than evil. The Son looks up to the Father, and in that Divine strength casts the evil one behind Him, and is left alone on the field, more than conqueror. (S. Greg.)
Sinlessness unfolds into holiness
Sinlessness is negative, holiness is positive; and it was requisite that the second Adam, like the first, should encounter the devil before His sinlessness could unfold into holiness. (J. C. Jones.)
The force of temptation
Run with the wind and you hardly know it is blowing. Run against it, and you are convinced of the existence of a resisting medium, and in direct proportion to the speed with which you run, will be your consciousness of the force by which you are opposed. Thus as long as you run with the devil and promptly do his behests, you may be inclined to deny his existence; disobey him, and you will be made painfully aware of his presence, and his endeavours to thwart all your efforts after good. (J. C. Jones.)
With the wild beasts.-
Christ with the wild beasts
Is this only one of those graphic touches which this vivid writer so often gives us? Was it a forcible way of describing a total absence of human sympathy? No doubt it served this purpose, but this was not all. When we recognise the correspondence between this and Adams temptation, our thoughts fly at once to Paradise, and we remember that he too was with the wild beasts, and that God had given him dominion over them, and that during the brief duration of his innocence he must have exercised it unfearing and unfeared. And we fancy we can see in this short but pregnant sentence a hint that He who came to inaugurate an era of restoration, and bring back the times of mans innocence, was not unmindful of the lower creatures and their subjection to vanity. It was a promise of what should one day come to pass when broken harmonies should be restored, and the prediction in Job_5:23, receive its fulfilment. It matters little that we can point to no evidence of its accomplishment as yet, because with the Lord a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years. There is no question that the hope was created, and that it laid hold upon the mind of the early Christians, in support of which we have the testimony of the Catacombs, where our Lord is so frequently represented in the character of Orpheus attracting wild animals of divers kinds by the sound of his lyre. The same was perpetuated by later legends, which made the surpassing goodness of St. Francis throw a spell of mysterious influence, not only over his fellow creatures, but over birds of the air and beasts of the field. (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)
The power of goodness to tame the animal creation
Before the fall Adam dwelt with the beasts on terms of closest friendship; but on the entrance of evil man grew cruel and beasts grew fiercer. But when Christ appeared, free from the taint of sin, the old relationship revived. The disturbed harmony of Eden was restored in the wilderness. Goodness is an unrivalled tamer of the animal creation, and Christs sojourn with savage beasts is an infallible pledge of the millennium. (J. C. Jones.)
And the angels ministered unto Him.-
Reasonableness of belief in the existence of angels
There are many who deny the existence of any spiritual beings save God and man. The wide universe is to them a solitary land, without inhabitants. There is but one filled with living creatures. It is the earth on which we move; and we, who have from century to century crawled from birth to death, and fretted out our little lives upon this speck of stardust which sparkles amid a million, million others upon the mighty plain of infinite space, we are the only living spirits. There is something pitiable in this impertinence. It is a drop of dew in the lonely cup of a gentian, which imagines itself to be all the water in the universe. It is the summer midge which has never left its forest pool, dreaming that it and its companions are the only living creatures in earth or air. There is no proof of the existence of other beings than ourselves, but there is also no proof of the contrary. Apart from revelation, we can think about the subject as we please. But it does seem incredible that we alone should represent in the universe the image of God; and if in one solitary star another race of beings dwell, if we concede the existence of a single spirit other than ourselves, we have allowed the principle. The angelic world of which the Bible speaks is possible to faith. (Stopford Brooke.)
How little we know of the angels
Little is said [in the Bible] of angels. They are like the constellations in space; there is light enough to reveal, to show that they are; but more is needed to reveal all their nature and functions. (Henry Batchelor.)
Association of the angels with Christ
Their airy and gentle coming may well be compared to the glory of colours flung by the sun upon the morning clouds, that seem to be born just where they appear. Like a beam of light striking through some orifice, they shine upon Zacharias in the temple. As the morning light finds the flowers, so they found the mother of Jesus; and their message fell on her, pure as dewdrops on the lily. To the shepherds eyes, they filled the midnight arch like auroral beams of light; but not as silently, for they sang more marvellously than when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. They communed with the Saviour in His glory of transfiguration, sustained Him in the anguish of the garden, watched Him at the tomb; and as they thronged the earth at His coming, so they seem to have hovered in the air in multitudes at the hour of His ascension. Beautiful as they seem, they are never mere poetical adornments. The occasions of their appearing are grand, the reasons weighty, and their demeanour suggests and befits the highest conception of superior beings. Their very coming and going is not with earthly movement. They are suddenly seen in the air, as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky in a summers day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. We could not imagine Christs history without angelic love. The sun without clouds of silver and gold, the morning on the fields without dew-diamonds, but not the Saviour without His angels. (H. W. Beecher.)
Spiritual visitants
I have ever with me invisible friends and enemies. The consideration of mine enemies shall keep me from security, and make me fearful of doing aught to advantage them. The consideration of my spiritual friends shall comfort me against the terror of the other; shall remedy my solitariness; shall make me wary of doing aught indecently; grieving me rather that I have ever heretofore made them turn away their eyes for shame of that whereof I have not been ashamed; that I have no more enjoyed their society; that I have been no more affected with their presence. What, though I see them not? I believe them. I were no Christian if my faith were not as sure as my sense. (Bp. Hall.)
Ministry of angels
It would require the tongue of angels themselves to recite all that we owe to these benign and vigilant guardians. They watch by the cradle of the newborn babe, and spread their celestial wings round the tottering steps of infancy. If the path of life be difficult and thorny, and evil spirits work us shame and woe, they sustain us; they bear the voice of our complaining, our supplication, our repentance, up to the foot of Gods throne, and bring us back in return a pitying benediction to strengthen and to cheer. When passion and temptation arrive for the mastery, they encourage us to resist: when we conquer, they crown us; when we falter and fail, they compassionate and grieve over us; when we are obstinate in polluting our own souls, and perverted not only in act but in will, they leave us; and woe to them that are so left! But the good angel does not quit his charge until his protection is despised, rejected, and utterly repudiated. Wonderful one fervour of their love, wonderful their meekness and patience, who endure from day to day the spectacle of the unveiled human heart with all its miserable weaknesses and vanities, its inordinate desires and selfish purposes! Constant to us in death, they contend against the powers of darkness for the emancipated spirit. (Mrs. Jameson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain CHAPTER 1:12, 13 (Mar_1:12-13)
CHAPTER 1:12, 13 (Mar_1:12-13)
THE TEMPTATION
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"And straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan; and He was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto Him." Mar_1:12-13 (R.V.)
ST. Mark has not recorded the details of our Lord's temptations, and lays more stress upon the duration of the struggle, than the nature of the last and crowning assaults. But he is careful, like the others, to connect it closely with the baptism of Jesus, and the miraculous testimony then borne to Him.
It is indeed instructive that He should have suffered this affront, immediately upon being recognized as the Messiah. But the explanation will not be found in the notion, which Milton has popularized, that only now Satan was assured of the urgent necessity for attacking Him:
"That heard the adversary . . . and with the voice Divine
Nigh thunderstruck, the exalted Man, to whom
Such high attest was given, awhile surveyed
With wonder."
As if Satan forgot the marvels of the sacred infancy. As if the spirits who attack all could have failed to identify, after thirty years of defeat, the Greater One whom the Baptist had everywhere proclaimed. No. But Satan admirably chose the time for a supreme effort. High places are dizzy, and especially when one has just attained them; and therefore it was when the voice of the herald and the Voice from the heavens were blended in acclaim, that the Evil One tried all his arts. He had formerly plunged Elijah into despair and a desire to die, immediately after fire from heaven responded to the prophet's prayer. Soon after this, he would degrade Peter to be his mouthpiece, just when his noblest testimony was borne, and the highest approval of his Lord was won. In the flush of their triumphs he found his best opportunity; but Jesus remained unflushed, and met the first recorded temptation, in the full consciousness of Messiahship, by quoting the words which spoke to every man alike, and as man.
It is a lesson which the weakest needs to learn, for little victories can intoxicate little men.
It is easy then to see why the recorded temptations insist upon the exceptional dignity of Christ, and urge Him to seize its advantages, while He insists on bearing the common burden, and proves Himself greatest by becoming least of all. The sharp contrast between His circumstances and His rank drove the temptations deep into His consciousness, and wounded His sensibilities, though they failed to shake His will.
How unnatural that the Son of God should lack and suffer hunger, how right that He should challenge recognition, how needful (though now His sacred Personality is cunningly allowed to fall somewhat into the background) that He should obtain armies and splendor.
This explains the possibility of temptation in a sinless nature, which indeed can only be denied by assuming that sin is part of the original creation. Not because we are sinful, but because we are flesh and blood (of which He became partaker), when we feel the pains of hunger we are attracted by food, at whatever price it is offered. In truth, no man is allured by sin, but only by the bait and bribe of sin, except perhaps in the last stages of spiritual decomposition.
Now, just as the bait allures, and not the jaws of the trap, so the power of a temptation is not its wickedness, not the guilty service, but the proffered recompense; and this appeals to the most upright man, equally with the most corrupt. Thus the stress of a temptation is to be measured by our gravitation, not towards the sin, but towards the pleasure or advantage which is entangled with that. And this may be realized even more powerfully by a man of keen feeling and vivid imagination who does not falter, than by a grosser nature which succumbs.
Now Jesus was a perfect man. To His exquisite sensibilities, which had neither inherited nor contracted any blemish, the pain of hunger at the opening of His ministry, and the horror of the cross at its close, were not less intense, but sharper than to ours. And this pain and horror measured the temptation to evade them. The issue never hung in the scales; even to hesitate would have been to forfeit the delicate bloom of absolute sinlessness; but, none the less, the decision was costly, the temptation poignant.
St. Mark has given us no details; but there is immense and compressed power in the assertion, only his, that the temptation lasted all through the forty days. We know the power of an unremitting pressure, an incessant importunity, a haunting thought. A very trifling annoyance, long protracted, drives men to strange remedies. And the remorseless urgency of Satan may be measured by what St. Matthew tells us, that only after the forty days Jesus became aware of the pains of hunger. Perhaps the assertion that He was with the wild beasts may throw some ray of light upon the nature of the temptation. There is no intimation of bodily peril. On the other hand it seems incredible that what is hinted is His own consciousness of the supernatural dignity from which
"The fiery serpent fled, and noxious worm;
The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof."
Such a consciousness would have relieved the strain of which their presence is evidently a part. Nay, but the oppressive solitude, the waste region so unlike His blooming Nazareth, and the ferocity of the brute creation, all would conspire to suggest those dread misgivings and questionings which are provoked by "the something that infects the world."
Surely we may believe that He Who was tempted at all points like as we are, felt now the deadly chill which falls upon the soul from the shadow of our ruined earth. In our nature He bore the assault and overcame. And then His human nature condescended to accept help, such as ours receives, from the ministering spirits which are sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation. So perfectly was He made like unto His brethren.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 12, 13. Tempted of Satan. See Matt. 4:1–11, and…
12, 13. Tempted of Satan. See Matt. 4:1–11, and the notes.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain Mat 4:1-11; Mar 1:12-13; Luk 4:1-13. Matthew says that…
THE TEMPTATION
Mat 4:1-11; Mar 1:12-13; Luk 4:1-13. Matthew says that “He was led by the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil.” Mark says: “The Spirit immediately impels Him away into the desert. And He was there in the desert forty days, being tempted by the devil; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels continued to minister unto Him.” Luke says: “Jesus, full of the Holy Ghost, went away from the Jordan; and was led by the Spirit into the desert, being tempted by the devil forty days. And He ate nothing during those days; and they being completed, He was afterward hungry.” I have gazed much upon the Mount of Temptation, lifting his bleak, rugged summit immediately west of Old Jericho, whose walls fell down responsive to the shouts of Israel, and about twenty miles from the ford of the Jordan where Jesus was baptized. It is a bleak, desolate, rugged, dreary region, inhabited only by wild beasts and robbers, unless the Bedoum, in his wanderings, here pitches his tent. The fact that Matthew and Luke positively state that He became hungry after the forty days, and Mark certifies that the angels were ministering unto Him throughout these forty days, involves the conclusion that He was supernaturally kept, in a state of spiritual rhapsody, like Moses and Elijah, during the forty days, so that He did not realize the sensation of hunger until after their expiration; and the ministering angels retiring, the natural, physical condition returns, and with it an intense sensation of hunger, as He had been forty days entirely without physical nutriment. Mark and Luke both state that the temptation was going on during the forty days, while Matthew states that after the forty days, the tempter coming to Him, said, “If Thou art the Son of God, say that these stones Mark, and Luke, we conclude that during the forty days He was undergoing a temptation by the combined minions of perdition, and the powers of darkness turned loose against Him; meanwhile, the angels are present with Him, and through their sympathetic and consolatory ministrations, He enjoys a heavenly prelibation to such an extent as to fill His spirit with an unearthly rapture, the indwelling Holy Spirit, whom He had received when He descended on Him at the Jordan, so thrilling Him with heavenly ecstasy as to supersede and hold in suspense the physical appetites, so as to suspend the sensation of hunger during the forty days of angelic ministration. During this period, while evidently the powers of darkness are turned loose against Him, and doubtless the monsters of the pit swarm around Him, their hideous howling commingling with the growl and the roar of the wild beasts, yet, amid all, He enjoys a glorious victory, so that His spiritual rapture enables Him so to triumph over the physical destitution and depletion as to utterly suspend the sensation of hunger. At the expiration of forty days, the angels having retreated away, and the roar of the hell-hounds, the hissing of reptiles, and the ferocity of the wild beasts all combine to augment the dismal solitude and the awful peril of the situation, suddenly King Diabolus, having vacated his ebony throne in the Pandemonium, and assuming the form of a great and mighty man, like Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great, dressed in all the pompous costume of royal majesty, approaches Him, and enters upon a personal interview. The ministering angels have retreated away; His spiritual rhapsody no longer holding in suspense the physical functions, a fearful collapse of exhausted nature now supervenes, the intensity of His hunger, after a fast of forty days, being utterly inconceivable. Here we see Jesus at the greatest possible disadvantage.
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(a) He is in the enemy’s territory, surrounded by desolation and horror; the ferocious wild beasts ready to devour Him, and more ferocious demons and hellish monsters on all sides, every angel having retreated away, and the bright glory of heaven mantled in dark eclipse, with the awful intensity of hunger, super induced by a forty days’ fast.
(b) In addition to all this, the prince of the Pandemonium, with the cultured intelligence of an archangel, now meets Him, with a personal order to satisfy His poor body with bread.
We must remember that, as Jesus was free from infirmity and from all physical ailment, which so frequently, in our case, suspends the appetite for food, His hunger subsequently to the expiration of the forty days and the angelic ministry was unutterably intense. While the Divinity of Christ could not be tempted, His humanity was tempted, in all the three great departments constituent to our being; i.e., the physical, spiritual, and intellectual.
(c) You observe from the inspired narrative that Satan made his first assault against the physical nature of Jesus, availing himself of the most superlative case of intensified hunger in order to induce Him to satisfy it by resorting to a miracle, which would be out of harmony with the Divine economy, because in probationary life we must be true to providence as well as grace, the former appertaining to the body, and the latter the soul; hence it was pertinent that Jesus, like every other man, should await the providence of God to satisfy His hunger.
In the case of Adam the First, Satan began with the physical, as now in the temptation of Jesus, it so turned out that he economized two thirds of his ammunition, achieving a complete victory in his first assault; i.e., slaying Adam on the first round. If he had failed in the temptation of his body with the fruit, he would then have proceeded to carry the war with all possible expedition into the dominion of spirit and intellect. Not so in the case of Adam the Second; there, Satan used all of his ammunition and lost it all.
(d) You see here the simple method by which Jesus defeated the devil:
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth through the mouth of God.” He is our Infallible Example, who alone has a right to teach the Christian soldier how to fight. If we will follow His example, we are certain to always have victory. You may fight the devil with your creed, and he will run over you rough-shod. Fight him with the plain, simple Word of God, and, like the Salvation Army song,
“If you want to see the devil run, Always shoot him with a gospel gun.”
(e) “Then the devil taketh Him into the holy city, and places Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and says to Him, if Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down; for it has been written, He gives His angels charge over Thee, to hear Thee up, lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.” (Psa 91:2)
Satan is a great Scriptorian, always ready to quote it; but never giving it correctly. So you find Satan’s preachers, always twisting and turning the Word of the Lord to suit their creed. In this quotation, Diabolus very adroitly omits the clause, “In all Thy ways.” We can perfectly rely upon the keeping power of God, so long as we are in the Divine order; but when we get out, then the devil drops a lasso round our necks. In this assault — i.e., Satan’s second campaign against Jesus — he directs his ammunition against the citadel of His human spirit, the receptacle of Divine grace and keeping-power through faith. Consequently the enemy makes a gattling- gun attack on His faith, using all of his chicanery to vitiate it, by turning it into presumption, which is the devil’s counterfeit for faith. O how Satan manipulates to supply the pulpits and the pews with this counterfeit at which is but a trap-door to let them fall into hell! The people believe their creed and support their Church, and presume that they are Christians, while experimentally ignorant of that faith which alone can move the mountains of sin out of their hearts. Again, Jesus uses the Sword of the Spirit, responding to Satan, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” (Deu 6:16.) This consummates the second victory which Jesus won in that memorable wilderness battle. The holy city here, as revealed by Luke, was Jerusalem, whose magnificent temple, so splendidly and artistically built and repaired by Herod the Great, had several lofty towers, to the highest of which Satan now leads Jesus, and having Him now in position and plight to leap away and take chances on the stone pavement several hundred feet below, he makes the bold challenge. It is about twenty-five miles away from the Mount of Temptation in Judea to Jerusalem. I trow, Satan, in gaudy sacerdotal robes, or perhaps royal regalia, in human incarnation, actually became the concomitant of Jesus for a period of time not here specified, but beginning at the end of the forty days. shows Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of the same, and says to Him, All these will I give unto Thee if, falling down, You may worship before me.” Luke states, “Because it has been given unto me, and I give it to whom I wish.”
Here we see that Satan resorts to a positive and unequivocal falsehood; though he has a false claim on the world, and a dominion over it which he has usurped, and for the time being — for reasons not well known to us, but doubtless lying deep in the probationary economy — he is permitted, in a sense, to reign over the world during the present evil age. (2Co 4:4.) Where E.V. represents God as calling the devil the “god of this world,” the true reading is the “god of this age,” as the world is to be gloriously redeemed after the Satanic age has come to an end. This is peculiar to Satan’s method of lying, especially to the people of God. While it is a substantial falsehood, it exhibits a phase of truth, in the simple fact of his usurped and temporarily permitted dominion over this world, which, even in the most plausible aspect, is subordinated to the sovereign, discriminating providence of God. We have no specification here as to what mountain this was. Mt. Olivet, east of Jerusalem, is the highest in all Southern Palestine. Mt. Pisgah, in full view, in the Land of Moab, east of the Dead Sea, is the highest in all that region. Mt. Hermon, two hundred miles north, ten thousand feet high, is actually the highest in all the Land of Canaan. As Luke says Satan “showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time”, he must have resorted to a panorama, in which he exhibited before the eye of Jesus all the time-honored kingdoms and mighty empires possessing and ruling the world at that time. This temptation was an assault against the powerful, unfallen intellect of Jesus. The greatest minds the ages have ever known, have all been embargoed, darkened, and paralyzed by the fall. As an Intellectualist, the Man Jesus stands alone in the world. Do you not see in His life how all the genius and the learning of the world and the fallen Church were laid under contribution to confuse, tangle up, and perplex Him? In all the histories of the ages, no other absolutely imperturbable man has ever been found. All the sophistry of priests, theologians, and politicians combined, signally failed in any case to embarrass or confuse Him. This final assault of the enemy, on the line of human ambition, appeals to His wonderful intellect. Nebuchadnezzar, order to conquer and possess it. These were all powerful intellectualists. The greater the intellect, the more incorrigible the ambition. The Greek proskuneses not only means worship, in the sense of adoration offered to a god, hut it means that homage and civility which we extend to persons of royal rank and dignity.
(g) You must remember that Satan before his fall was a great archangel, one of the brightest that ever shone around the effulgent Throne.
The Son of God is uncreated and co-eternal with the Father. Doubtless, during this interview, which was probably more prolix than we generally think, Satan adverted to their old friendship in the regions of fadeless bliss, and perhaps appealed to His sympathies; as amid those terrible troubles which had already resulted in his ejectment from heaven, he had resorted to an effort to enlarge his dominions by the accession of this world to the contracted regions of woe; and now, “O Son of God, that You have come to dispute my claim to the planet Earth, I propose to compromise the whole matter by surrendering up to You the sole and exclusive dominion of this controverted territory, with the understanding that You shall have it and reign over it forever, while I will reign in the dominion of Hades; meanwhile, I shall enjoin but one condition on Your part, and that is, that You and I shall be friends again, as in bygone ages in celestial worlds.” Of course, any complicity with Satan would have abducted the humanity from the Divinity, which, in that case, would have returned back to heaven, the plan of salvation collapsing forever. “Then Jesus says to him, Get behind Me, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord God; Him only shalt thou serve.” (Deu 6:13.) “Then Satan leaves Him,” as Luke says, “for a season.”
“Behold, the angels came and continued to minister unto Him.” Here you see that a single stroke with the Sword of the Spirit repels Satan, and consummates the victory. There is now good reason for his final and utter withdrawal from the battle-field. Every army retreats the moment their ammunition is all expended. As Satan had no possible access to the Divinity, he could only work on the humanity, which, pursuant to the Divine similitude in which man was created, has but three entities — i.e., the physical, spiritual, and intellectual. When Satan had turned all the battering rams of hell against these three towers of Mansoul, and in every case suffered signal defeat, he could do nothing more than retreat from the field, crestfallen and hopelessly defeated. What a decisive contrast with his first battle against humanity in Eden, where he saved two thirds of his ammunition, Adam falling on the first assault! But now, in his campaign against Adam the Second, you see he used all of his ammunition, and lost it all. Glorious victory for you and me, and all who, through evangelical repentance and humble faith, will receive it!
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XIX. Jesus Tempted].
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XIX. Jesus Tempted].
XIX. JESUS TEMPTED IN THE WILDERNESS. aMATT. IV. 1-11; bMARK I. 12, 13; cLUKE IV. 1-13.
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c1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, b12 And straightway the Spirit driveth him forth cand a1 Then [Just after his baptism, with the glow of the descended Spirit still upon him, and the commending voice of the Father still ringing in his ears, Jesus is rushed into the suffering of temptation. Thus abrupt and violent are the changes of life. The spiritually exalted may expect these sharp contrasts. After being in the third heaven, Paul had a messenger of Satan to buffet him-- 2Co_12:7] was Jesus led up [The two expressions "driveth" and "led up" show that Jesus was drawn to the wilderness by an irresistible impulse, and did not go hither of his own volition ( Eze_40:2). He was brought into temptation, but did not seek it. He was led of God into temptation, but was not tempted of God. God [87] may bring us into temptation ( Mat_6:13, Mat_26:41, Job_1:12, Job_2:6), and may make temptation a blessing unto us, tempering it to our strength, and making us stronger by the victory over it ( 1Co_10:13, Jam_1:2, Jam_1:12), but God himself never tempts us-- Jam_1:13] of the Spirit into the wilderness [The wilderness sets in back of Jericho and extends thence along the whole western shore of the Dead Sea. The northern end of this region is in full view from the Jordan as one looks westward, and a more desolate and forbidding landscape it would be hard to find. It is vain to locate the temptation in any particular part of it. Jesus may have wandered about over nearly all of it] to be tempted of the devil [As a second David, Jesus went forth to meet that Goliath who had so long vaunted himself against all who sought to serve God, and had as yet found none to vanquish him. The account of the temptation must have been given to the disciples by Jesus himself, and as it pleased him to give it to us as an actual history of real facts, it behooves us to accept it without being presumptuously inquisitive. Of course, it has supernatural features, but the supernatural confronts us all through the life of Jesus, so there is nothing strange about it here. Jesus had taken upon him our flesh, and hence he could be tempted, with a possibility of falling. But his divinity insured his victory over temptation. He became like us in ability to fall, that he might make us like unto himself in power to resist. It behooved him to be tempted, and thus sharing our nature with its weakness and temptation he might bring us to share his nature with its strength and sinlessness ( Heb_2:17, Heb_2:18, Heb_4:15, Heb_4:16). Sinlessness does not preclude temptation, else Adam could not have been tempted, nor could Satan himself have fallen. Moreover, temptation is in so sense sin. It is the yielding of the will to temptation which constitutes sin. The spiritual history of humanity revolves around two persons; namely, the first and the second Adam. The temptation of Christ was as real as that of Adam. He had taken upon himself our temptable nature ( Phi_2:7, Phi_2:8), and he was tempted not as a private soldier, but as the second Adam, the Captain of [88] our salvation ( Heb_2:10-18). The failure of the first Adam brought sorrow, darkness and death; the success of the second Adam brought joy, light and immortality. One of the tenets of modern infidelity is the denial of the personality of the devil. It is asserted that the idea of a devil was not known to the early Hebrews, but was borrow from Persian dualism. The Persians held that there were two contending deities--a good one and a bad one; and the Hebrews, according to these critics, learned this doctrine from the Persians during the days of their Babylonian captivity, and modified it so that the god of evil became the devil. But such a theory is based upon the absurd notion that all the books of the Old Testament were written after the return of the Jews from Babylon. Their theory requires this notion, for the books of Genesis and Job, which were written centuries before the captivity, both show a knowledge of this being, and the first connects him and his work with the very beginning of human history. Those who believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures must also believe in the personality of the devil, for they plainly teach it. The devil is a fallen angel ( Jud_1:6, 2Pe_2:4). This doctrine need startle no one, for as there are good and bad spirits in the body, so there are good and bad spirits out of the body. Since God permits sinful spirits in the body, why should he not also permit them out of the body? If there can be a Herod, a Nero, a Judas, among men, why may there not be a Satan among evil spirits? Being but an angel, Satan is neither omnipresent, omniscient nor omnipotent. He is only a tolerated rebel, as we are tolerated rebels. He was the first sinner ( 1Jo_3:8), and was the originator of sin ( Joh_8:44). He is the perpetual tempter of mankind ( Rev_20:2, Rev_20:8), but he shall be conquered by the Redeemer ( Joh_12:31, Rev_12:9), and may be conquered by us also through the grace of Christ ( 1Pe_5:8, 1Pe_5:9, Jam_4:7); but is, nevertheless, dangerous ( Rev_2:10, Rev_3:9). Jesus, therefore, teaches us to pray for deliverance from him ( Mat_6:13, R.V.). Jesus will destroy the works of Satan ( 1Jo_3:8), and Satan himself shall suffer eternal punishment [89] ( Rev_20:10). There is but one devil in the spirit world. The word which our King James Version translates "devils" should be translated "demons." The word "devil" means false accuser or slanderer, and the word in the plural is twice applied, metaphorically, to men and women ( 2Ti_3:3, 1Ti_3:11). The devil is called slanderer because he speaks against men ( Rev_12:10-12) and against God ( Gen_3:1-5). The word "devil" is Greek. The word "Satan" is Hebrew, and means adversary ( Job_2:1). Satan is referred to under many other terms, such as Beelzebub ( Mat_12:24); serpent ( Rev_12:9); prince of the powers of the air ( Eph_2:2); Abaddon (Hebrew) and Apollyon (Greek), meaning destroyer ( Rev_9:11); Belial, meaning good for nothing ( 2Co_6:15); murderer and liar ( Joh_8:44); prince of this world ( Joh_12:31); god of this world ( 2Co_4:4); and the dragon ( Rev_12:7). These terms are always used in the Bible to designate an actual person; they are never used merely to personify evil. The devil may have appeared to Jesus in bodily form, or he may have come insensibly as he does to us. Our Lord's temptation makes the personality of the tempter essential, else Christ's own heart must have suggested evil to him, which is incompatible with his perfect holiness.] b13 And he was cled in the Spirit [that is, under the power of the Spirit] in the wilderness [Isolation from humanity is no security from temptation. In fact, our present passage of Scripture shows that it is highly favorable to temptation. The experience of all hermits shows that loneliness is the mother of a multitude of evil desires] 2 during forty days [Matthew speaks of the temptation as coming "after" forty days. Evidently Mark and Luke regard the long fast as part of the process of temptation, seeing that without it the first temptation would have been without force. There is no evidence of any other specific temptations before the three], being tempted of bSatan; cthe devil, band he was with the wild beasts [A graphic touch, showing the dreariness and desolation of the wilderness, and indicating its peril. Lions, [90] wolves, leopards and serpents have been found in the Judæan wilderness]; cAnd he did eat nothing [It used to be thought that a forty days' absolute fast was a practical impossibility, and Luke's words were therefore modified to mean that he ate very little. But as a forty days' fast has been safely accomplished in modern times, and as it was Jesus who fasted, we see no reason why we should not take Luke's statement literally, as indicating an absolute fast] in those days: and when they were completed. a2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights [A forty days' fast was accomplished by Moses ( Exo_34:28, Deu_9:18), and by Elijah ( 1Ki_19:8), and it is a significant fact in this connection that these two men appeared with Christ at his transfiguration ( Mat_17:3). Those who share Christ's sufferings shall also share his glorification ( Rom_8:17, 2Ti_2:11, 2Ti_2:12). The forty days' fast became a basis for the temptation. We are told that temptation results from the excitement of desire ( Jam_1:14), and, as a rule, the greater the desire the greater the temptation. Viewed from this standpoint the temptation of the second Adam greatly exceeded in strength that of the first, for Adam abstained as to a particular fruit, but Christ fasted as to all things edible], he afterward hungered. [Here, for the first time, our Lord is shown as sharing our physical needs. We should note for our comfort that one may lack bread and suffer want, and still be infinitely beloved in heaven.] 3 And the tempter came [Satan is pre-eminently the tempter, for other tempters are his agents. He may possibly have appeared as an angel of light ( 2Co_11:14), but the purpose of his coming is more important than the manner of it. He came to produce sin in Jesus, for sin would render him forever incapable of becoming our Saviour--a sacrifice for the sins of others] c3 And the devil said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it acommand that these stones become bread. [The devil's "if" strikes at the faith of Christ, and faith is the bond of union and accord between man and God. The main sin of this temptation was therefore distrust, though [91] it had other sinful phases. The Father's voice had just declared the Sonship of Jesus, and Satan here boldly questions the truth of God's words, just as he did in the beginning ( Gen_3:3-5). The temptation smacks of curiosity, and curiosity is the mother of many sins. Though Satan so glibly questioned the divinity of Christ, his kingdom soon began to feel the power of that divinity ( Luk_4:34-41), and shall continue to feel it until his kingdom is destroyed ( Heb_2:14, 1Jo_3:8). This temptation appealed to the present appetite, the impulse of the moment, as many of our temptations do. It has been quaintly said of the tempter that "he had sped so successfully to his own mind by a temptation about a matter of eating with the first Adam, that he practiced the old manner of trading with the second." This first temptation is still Satan's favorite with the poor. He suggests to them that if they were really the beloved objects of God's care, their condition would be otherwise. We should note that Jesus wrought no selfish miracle. Such an act would have been contrary to all Scripture precedent. Paul did not heal himself ( 1Co_12:7-9, Gal_4:13, Col_4:14), nor Epaphroditus, ( Phi_2:25-27), nor Trophimus ( 2Ti_4:20). Denying himself the right to make bread in the wilderness, Christ freely used his miraculous power to feed others in the desert ( Mat_14:15-21), and merited as just praise those words which were meant as a bitter taunt-- Mat_27:42.] 4 But he { c4 And Jesus aanswered and said, cunto him, It is written [Jesus quotes Deu_8:3. It is a saying relative to the times when Israel was sustained by manna in the wilderness. The case of Jesus was now similar to that of Israel. He was in a foodless wilderness, but he trusted that as God had provided for Israel in its helplessness, so would he now provide for him. Israel sinned by doubt and murmuring, and proposing to obtain bread in its own way--that is, by returning to Egypt ( Exo_16:1-9). Jesus avoided a like sin. We should note the use which our Lord made of Scripture: in his hour of trial he did not look to visions and voices and special revelation for guidance, but used the written Word as the lamp [92] for his feet ( Psa_119:105); in the conflict of temptation he did not defend himself by his own divine wisdom, but used that wisdom which God had revealed to all Israel through his prophets. Jesus fought as a man ( Phi_2:6, Phi_2:7), and used that weapon which, as God, he had given to man ( Eph_6:17). Jesus used the Scripture as of final, argument-ending authority. Eve also started with "God hath said" ( Gen_3:3); but she was not constant in her adherence to God's word. Jesus permitted Satan neither to question nor pervert the Scripture], Man [In using the word "man" Jesus takes his stand with us as a human being] shall not live by bread alone [Called out of Egypt as God's Son ( Mat_2:15), Jesus could well expect that he would be fed with manna after his forty days' fast. He trusted that God could furnish a table in the wilderness ( Psa_78:19). We, too, have abundant reason for a like trust. God gave us our lives, and gave his Son to redeem them from sin. He may let us suffer, but we can not perish is we trust him. Let us live by his word rather than by bread. It is better to die for righteousness than to live by sin. God fed Israel with supernatural bread, to show the people that they lived thus, and not by what they were pleased to call natural means. The stomach is a useful agent, but it is not the source of life, nor even the life sustainer. Those who think that the securing of bread is the first essential to the sustaining of life, will fail to seek any diviner food, and so will eventually starve with hunger--soul hunger.] abut by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God [To satisfy our sense of duty is often more pleasant than to appease the pangs of hunger ( Joh_4:32-34, Job_23:12, Jer_15:16). The trust of Jesus that God would speak in his behalf and save him, was like that of Job ( Job_13:15). God can sustain our lives without food if he chooses. We shall live if God wills it, bread or no bread; and we shall likewise die at his word ( Mat_6:25, Joh_6:47-58, Act_17:28). God can support our lives independent of our body-- Mat_10:28.] 5 Then the devil taketh him [Matthew emphasizes the [93] compulsory companionship of Satan. Jesus was in the hands of Satan as was Job ( Job_2:5, Job_2:6); but in Jesus' case Satan had the power of life and death, and he eventually took Jesus to the cross and slew him there] into the holy city [A common name for Jerusalem. The inscription on Jewish coins was "Jerusalem the Holy." Arabs to-day call it "el Kuds," "the Holy." The Holy City did not exclude the tempter nor temptations. The church may be the scene of man's sorest trial to resist wrong. But in the Holy City which is to come there will be no temptation]; c9 And he led him to Jerusalem, aand set him [The two verbs "taketh" and "setting" imply that Satan exercised a control over the bodily person of our Lord] on the pinnacle of the temple [It is not known exactly what spot is indicated by the word "pinnacle." Hence three places have been contended for the proper locality: 1. The apex of the temple structure itself. 2. The top of Solomon's porch. 3. The top of Herod's royal portico. As to the temple itself, Josephus tells us that its roof was covered with spikes of gold, to prevent even birds from alighting upon it, and, if so, men could not stand upon it. Solomon's porch, or the eastern portico, faced the Mount of Olives, and has been fixed upon by tradition as the place from which James, the Lord's brother, was hurled. The royal portico of Herod was at the southeast corner of the temple enclosure, and overlooked the valley of Kidron. Here was then, and is yet, the greatest height about the temple, and it was, therefore, the most suitable place for Satan's proposal], 6 and saith { csaid aunto him, If [Godly life rests on faith. The life the devil would have us lead rests on ifs and uncertainties, on doubt and skepticism. We should note that foolish men doubt the divinity of Jesus, but the temptations of our Lord show how positively Satan was convinced of it. The opening scenes of Christ's ministry are redolent with his divinity. The Baptist asserted his purity and might, the Spirit visibly acknowledged his worthiness, the Father audibly testified to his Sonship, and the devil twice assaulted him as the divine champion] thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down [94] [The first temptation was to under-confidence; the second to over-trust and presumption--two very dangerous conditions of the soul. Men begin by disparagingly doubting that Jesus can save them from their sins, and end by recklessly presuming that he will save them in their sins. Comparing this with Eve's temptation, we find that she was vainly curious to see if she might be like God ( Gen_3:5), but Christ resisted such curiously. It is urged by some as to this temptation that there is no hint of vainglory or display, because nothing is said about casting himself down in the presence of the people, and that Jesus was merely taken to the temple because the sacred locality would tend to heighten his trust in the protecting promise which Satan quoted. But this ground is not well taken, for 1. The temple presumes a crowd. 2. We have a right to presume that this temptation would be like others to which Jesus was subjected. He was frequently invited to work miracles to satisfy curiosity, and he invariably refused to do so]: cfrom hence: 10 for it is written [This quotation is taken from Psa_91:11, Psa_91:12, and applies to man generally. Note 1. The devil's head is full of Scripture, but to no profit, for his heart is empty of it. 2. By quoting it he shows a sense of its power which modern rationalism would do well to consider. 3. Satan's abuse of Scripture did not discourage Christ's use of it], He shall give his angels charge concerning thee [Regarding Satan's words as a quotation, we are struck with the fact that his knowledge of this particular passage was based upon his personal experience. He had been confronted by the presence of the guardian angels and had fretted at it ( Job_1:10, 2Ki_6:8, 2Ki_6:17, Psa_34:7, Jud_1:9). As a temptation, Satan's words appeal to Jesus to be more religious; to put more trust and reliance upon the promises of the Father; and he puts him in the place--the temple--where he might argue that God could least afford to let his promise fail], to guard thee: 11 and, On their hands they shall bear thee up [All who love pomp, display of artistic taste, gaieties of fashion, intoxication of fame, etc., fall by this temptation. Those who truly rest on God's promises, stand on a sure [95] foundation, but those who rise on bubbles must come down when they burst], Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone. 12 And Jesus answering, said unto him, aagain it is written csaid, ["Written," "said"; the writings of Scripture are in general the sayings of God. But the Bible is not made up of isolated texts. To get a right understanding we must compare Scripture with Scripture. We could have no higher indorsement of the Old Testament than this use of it by Christ. It was sufficient for him in his temptations, and with the addition of the New Testament, it is sufficient for us in all things-- 2Ti_3:16, 2Ti_3:17, Col_3:3-16], aThou shalt not make trial [Make experiment upon God, set traps for him, put one's self in dangerous situations, hoping thereby to draw forth some show of loving deliverance. Had Jesus cast himself down, he would have demanded of the Father a needless miracle to prove his Sonship, and would thereby have put the love of God to an unnecessary trial. All who jeopardize themselves without any command of God or call of duty, make trial of his love] of the Lord thy God. 8 Again, the devil taketh him [whether naturally or supernaturally, "whether in the body or out of the body" ( 2Co_12:2-4), we can not tell. But it was a real, practical trial and temptation] unto an exceeding high mountain [it is immaterial which mountain this was; for from no mountain could one see the whole earth with the natural eye], c5 And he led him up, aAnd showeth cshowed ahim [It is not said by either evangelist that Jesus saw the kingdoms from the mountain-top, but that Satan showed them to him. From any high Judæan mountain it would be easy for him to locate Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia and Assyria, and as he pointed out their locality a few brief words of description would picture them to the imagination of Jesus, and cause their glories to move before his eyes. But it is very likely that to this description some sort of supernatural vision was added. It tempted the eye of Jesus as the luscious fruit did the eye of Eve-- Gen_3:6] all the kingdoms of the world [It tempted Jesus to realize the dreams [96] which the Jewish nation entertained. It was an appeal to him to reveal himself in the fullness of his power and authority as above generals, princes, kings, and all beings of all ages. An appeal to obtain by physical rather than by spiritual power; by the short-cut path of policy rather than by the long road of suffering and martyrdom. Jesus came to obtain the kingdoms of the world. He was born King of the Jews, and confessed himself to be a King before Pilate. All authority is now given to him, and he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet, and until all the kingdoms of the world become his kingdom. Satan's way to obtain this kingdom differed from God's way. He might obtain it by doing Satan's will and becoming his worshiper, or by worshiping God and doing his will. Satan would give the speedier possession, but God the more lasting. We also strive for a kingdom; but let us obtain ours as Christ did his], and the glory of them [That is, all their resources as well as their magnificence. Their cities, lands and people, their armies, treasures and temples, etc. Many parents, in encouraging their children to seek earthly glory and distinction, unconsciously assist Satan in urging this temptation]; cin a moment of time [These words strongly indicate that the prospect must have been supernaturally presented. The suddenness of the vision added greatly to the power of the temptation]; a9 and he cthe devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority aAll these things will I give thee, [From the standpoint of Christ's humanity, how overwhelming the temptation! It was the world's honors to one who had for thirty years led the life of a village carpenter; it was the world's riches to him who had not where to lay his head. From the standpoint of Jesus' divinity the temptation was repulsive. It was a large offer in the sight of Satan, but a small one in the sight of him who made all the worlds. Such offers are large to the children of the world, but small to those who are by faith joint-heirs with Christ ( Rom_8:17, Phi_3:7, Phi_3:8). But the temptation was, nevertheless, very specious and plausible. The power of Jesus linked with that of Satan, and [97] operating through Jewish fanaticism and pagan expectation would, in a few months, have brought the whole earth into one temporal kingdom, with Jesus as its head. But the kingdom of Christ rested upon a surer promise ( Psa_2:8) than that here given by the "father of lies." God had promised, and, despite the pretensions of Satan, God had not yet retired from the government of the world. It was true that Satan and his emissaries had, by usurpation, gained an apparent possession of the world, but Jesus had right to it as the heir of God ( Mat_21:33-43). Being stronger than Satan, he had come to regain his kingdom, not by treaty, but by conquest ( Luk_11:19-22). Moreover, he would obtain it as a spiritual and not as a carnal kingdom. Servants of Christ should remember this. Every attempt to establish Messiah's kingdom as an outward, worldly dominion is an effort to convert the kingdom of heaven into the kingdom of the devil. God's kingdom can not be secularized. It should be noted also that Satan omits the words "if thou art the Son of God" in this instance, for their presence would have marred the force of the temptation. Note also that this was the only temptation wherein Satan evinced any show of generosity. He is slow to give anything, and most of us sell out to him for nothing-- Isa_52:3], and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me [Satan does not claim an absolute but a derivative right, and his claim is not wholly unfounded ( Joh_12:31, Joh_14:30, Joh_16:11). But the kingdom has been delivered unto him by men rather than by God ( Eph_2:2). How much more quickly Jesus would have obtained power, had he received it from men by consenting to co-operate with them in their sinful practices as does Satan]; and to whomsoever I will [Not so Jesus. His giving is according to the Father's will-- Mat_9:23] I give it [The Emperor Tiberius then held it in the fullest sense ambition ever realized. Yet he was the most miserable and degraded of men. Satan knows how to take full toll for all that he gives.] 7 If [In the temptations Satan uses three "ifs." The first "if" is one of despairing doubt; the second, one of vainglorious speculation; the third, one of moral and [98] spiritual compromise] thou therefore wilt afall down and worship cbefore me [Satan and God each seek the worship of man, but from very different motives. God is holiness and goodness, and we are invited to worship him that we may thereby be induced to grow like him. But Satan seeks worship for vanity's sake. How vast the vanity which would give so great a reward for one act of worship! Verily the devil is fond of it. He gives nothing unless he obtains it, and all his generosity is selfishness. Worshiping before Satan is the bending of the soul rather than of the body. He holds before each of us some crown of success, and says: "Bend just a little; slightly compromise your conscience. Accept the help of Pharisee and Sadducee, and keep silent as to their sins. Mix a little diplomacy with your righteousness. Stoop just a little. If you do, I will aid you and insure your success. If you do not, I will defeat you and laugh at your failures." It is Satan's sin to make such suggestions, but it is not our sin until we comply with them. We may more quickly obtain by his wrong way, but more surely by God's right way. Let no Christian be humiliated or discouraged by gross temptation, since even the Son of God was tempted to worship the devil. What Jesus would not do, the Beast has done, and has received the kingdoms for a season ( Rev_13:1-9). Note, too, that it is all one whether we worship Satan, or mammon, the gift which he offers-- Mat_6:24], it shall all be thine. 8 And a10 Then cJesus answered and said asaith cunto him, aGet thee hence [The passionate utterance of an aroused soul. Indignation is as divine as patience ( Eph_4:26). Satan's sweetest temptation was most disgusting to Christ, for its sin was so grossly apparent. It ran counter to the very first of the ten commandments. Jesus would give it no room in his thoughts; he spurned it, as being as heinous as the law describes it ( Deu_5:6-11). Temptation must be peremptorily rejected. Jesus did not stop to weigh the worthiness of Satan; it was sufficient that God only is to be worshiped. As God, Jesus was himself an object of worship; but as man he worshiped the Father privately and publicly. Satan [99] sought to command Jesus, but was commanded of him. Step by step Satan has obeyed this command, and foot after foot, earth's spiritual world has been yielded by his departing presence], Satan [The first and second temptations were so subtle and covert, and their sin so skillfully disguised, as to suggest that Satan himself was disguised. If so, his pride and vanity, revealed in this last temptation, betrayed him so that Jesus tore off his mask and called him by his right name. When he tempted him in a somewhat similar matter, Jesus called Simon Peter by this name ( Mat_16:23), but he laid a different command upon each of them. To Satan he spoke as an enemy, saying, "Get thee hence." He ordered Satan from his presence, for he had no proper place there. To Peter he spoke as to a presumptuous disciple, saying, "Get thee behind me." The disciple is a follower of his master, and his proper place is in the rear]: for it is written [Jesus gives a free translation of Deu_6:13. He substitutes the word "worship" for the word "fears." Fear prohibits false and induces true worship, and loving worship is the source of all acceptable service. The three Scripture quotations used by Jesus are all from the book of Deuteronomy. He struck Satan with that very part of the Spirit's sword which modern critical infidelity, in the name of religion, and often aided by so-called religious organizations, seeks to persuade us to cast away], Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. [By serving God, Jesus obtained all the earthly authority which the devil offered him, and heavenly authority in addition thereto ( Mat_28:18). So much better are the rewards of God than Satan's.] c13 And when the devil had completed every temptation. a11 Then the devil leaveth che departeth from him for a season. [See Jam_4:7. But Satan left to return many times. Here was the first being endowed with human nature who had defeated Satan under all circumstances for thirty years. This was Satan's first defeat under Christ's ministry. His last is yet to come, and it shall come by this same Christ. Temptations are battles. They leave the victor stronger and the [100] vanquished weaker. Hence Satan when resisted is represented as fleeing. But he only flees for a season. He never despairs of the conflict so long as man is on the earth. Christ was constantly tempted by the returning devil ( Luk_22:28). As Jesus hung upon the cross, all these three temptations with their accompanying "ifs" were spread out before him-- Mat_27:39-43] aand behold, angels came [They had probably witnessed the contest. Compare 1Co_4:9, 1Ti_3:16. Angels do not appear again visibly ministering unto Jesus until we find him in Gethsemane ( Luk_22:43). When Satan finally departs from us, we, too, shall find ourselves in the presence of angels-- Luk_16:22] and ministered unto him. [Jesus was probably fed by the angels, as was Elijah by one of them ( 1Ki_19:4-7). Satan and suffering first, then angels, refreshment and rest. God had indeed given his angels charge, and they came to him who refused to put the father to the test. But they did not succor Jesus during his temptation, for that was to be resisted by himself alone-- Isa_63:3.]
[FFG 87-101]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The temptation:
The temptation:
v. 12. And immediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness.
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v. 13. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was, with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto Him.
"Immediately," not a mere introductory word here as so often in Mark’s Gospel, but emphasizing quick action. Christ was now formally installed and prepared for His work; He must enter upon it at once. Mark well: the Spirit drove Him: into the wilderness. It is a stronger word than that used by the other evangelists, Mat 4:1; Luk 4:1. Christ was a true human being. He had some idea of the severity of the trial that awaited Him, and He very naturally hung back; the flesh was weak. But the Spirit, by gentle insistence, urged Him onward. It was a hard fight which He must undergo, but it was a part of His office. For forty days He was out there in the mountainous wilderness; for forty days He withstood the unceasing attacks of Satan, for the incidents narrated by Matthew and Luke are only outstanding features of the temptation. To destroy the works of the devil He had come into the world, 1Jn 3:8, and to destroy the works of the devil He must begin at the very outset of His official work. An impressive picture: The Son of God, according to His human nature, surrounded by the majesty of the desert hills, with no living being to keep him company but the wild beasts whose haunts He had invaded, attacked in every possible way, in every conceivable manner, by Satan, who endeavors, with all his devilish power and cunning, to hinder the work of redemption. But the Savior conquered, He routed the devil. And the Victor received the ministrations of the angels, the good spirits, who came to Him after the battle, whose service refreshed Him according to both body and soul. It was a spiritual crisis through which Jesus here passed while He resisted the temptation, both fierce and protracted. It is more than probable that the terrific strain of those days of ceaseless vigilance left Him as exhausted as in Gethsemane. When it was necessary for an angel to come and strengthen Him.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
After Jesus' baptism, he is in the wilderness for 40 days and then goes to Galilee to teach and call his disciples.
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compelled him to go out
"forced Jesus to go out"
He was in the wilderness
"He stayed in the wilderness"
forty days
"40 days" (See: Numbers)
He was with
"He was among"
translationWords
Holy Spirit
desert
tempt
Satan
angel
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 1:12-13 The Spirit then compelled Jesus (cp. Matt 4:1;…
1:12-13 The Spirit then compelled Jesus (cp. Matt 4:1; Luke 4:1): Jesus was victorious over Satan and temptation from the beginning of his ministry; the later exorcisms (Mark 1:21-34; 3:11-12; 5:1-20; 9:14-27) are an outworking of that victory (see 3:27). • Jesus was tempted in the wilderness of Judea. Satan and wild animals (Isa 13:19-22; Ezek 34:25) give the wilderness an evil aura. The wild animals included dogs, wolves, leopards, jackals, and bears. • The period of forty days recalls Israel’s forty years of testing in the wilderness. Israel failed, but Jesus was victorious—he was tempted without sinning (Heb 2:18; 4:15; cp. Jas 1:3, 12; 1 Pet 1:7; Rev 2:10).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.