The WATCHFUL Spirit of
the Lord's Prayer.
"Lead us not into temptation." Matthew 6:13
This solemn petition--perhaps the most solemn one of the
whole prayer--would appear a natural and impressive consequence of the
preceding one for forgiveness. In the contemplation of that petition, the
mind was necessarily led into a deep and grave consideration of sin in its
various forms, and of the confession of sin in its minute detail, and of the
forgiveness of sin in its daily renewal.
Passing from that theme, it would seem as if the next
utterance of the wakeful, tremulous heart would be, "Lord, lead me not into
temptation. If such is sin; if such the sore penitence to which its
commission leads, and such the humiliating acknowledgment in which it
results, and such the costly pardon--the price of blood--which its guilt
demands, Lord, keep me, fence me, surround me; that, having been washed
every whit clean, I may tread no path, be placed in no position whereby I
may be exposed to the power of temptations which I cannot evade, whose
strength I cannot resist, and thus relapse from my high and holy walk with
You. You have given me absolution from sin, but no indulgence to sin. I
would be as free from the tyranny as from the condemnation of sin, and would
find my most precious, powerful, and persuasive motive to seek after the
attainment of holiness in Your full, and free, and most loving forgiveness.
Having washed my feet, how shall I defile them!"
The present scene of the Christian is a scene
of temptation. One is almost led to inquire, 'When has it not been?'
Even in the paradisiacal age of the world and history of the Church it was
so. Who would have thought of temptation lurking in the leafy bowers, and of
the serpent's trail along the sylvan walks of Eden? And yet thus it was.
Strange to say, that dark deluge of evil which for centuries has rolled its
angry billows over the earth, bearing myriads on its bosom to the ocean of a
forfeited and dreadful eternity, had its rise in a yet unsinning
paradise. Behold our primal parents! Stately trees of righteousness,
beauteous plants of paradise! Yet the enemy came in like a flood, and swept
them before its powerful and resistless force. Thus there never has been a
scene of our humanity, or an era in the history of the world, in which the
people of God have been exempt from temptation.
But much more is this the case now. How should it, in the
nature of things, be otherwise? MAN is a fallen being. He is, by nature, one
unmitigated mass of sin, there dwelling in the flesh no good thing. The
WORLD, with all its landscape beauty, its mountain grandeur, its Alpine
sublimity, its countless forms of loveliness, is a sin-tainted,
curse-blighted world. More than this, it is Satan's empire--where he holds
his seat, rules, and reigns by God's permission, over myriads of the human
race, until Christ shall come to overthrow his sovereignty, and will make
all things new.
Such is the solemn truth which underlies the whole
remedial scheme of the gospel of the blessed God. But do our legislators,
our philosophers, our educationists, and even some of the ministers of
religion, clearly see, fully recognize, and broadly enunciate these
facts--that man is totally fallen, and the world wholly corrupt? No, to a
great degree, the legislation, and the education, and the preaching of the
day is a solemn ignoring of these truths. But not so those who are
enlightened by the truth and the Spirit of God. The wonder to them is, not
that man is so sinful, but that, by the grace of God, he should become so
holy. Not that the world is so evil, but that, by the restraints of God's
power, it should be so good. Such is the scene through which the believer
passes to heaven. His road homewards is across the enemy's country; his path
to glory winds its way through a world lying in the wicked one. Is it any
marvel that the present state of the Christian should be of universal and
incessant temptation? But let us particularize.
The word "temptation" sometimes signifies TRIAL.
God's people are a tried people. Trial is that process by which the
Christian is tested--his religion, his principles, his hope, are brought to
the proof. It is in this sense we first regard the process to which the
believer is subjected, more immediately by GOD HIMSELF. In Genesis 22
we read, "God tested Abraham." In the Epistle to the Hebrews we find
the significance of the word, "By faith Abraham, when he was tried."
And again, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because
when he has stood the test." Now, in this important sense, God may be
said to TRY His people. He sometimes, as in the case of Job, unchains, as it
were, the enemy for a little while, permitting him to come in like a flood,
to worry and annoy the believer.
And, again, God may permit inbred corruptions to
have a measured and momentary power over the believer, and then sin seems,
for the time, to be in the ascendant.
Once more, God may allow His child to pass through a
great fight of affliction, for "the Lord tries the righteous," and by
this process subject him to great and severe temptation. But all this
springs from the depths of His infinite wisdom and love!
TWO OBJECTS He thus seeks to accomplish. The first is the
unfolding of His own character in the eyes of His people. God
remembers that, even at best, how limited is our knowledge of Him; but how
much smaller the measurement that is not gauged by the test of trial. We
know Him revealedly in His Word; we know Him symbolically by
His providence; but it is in the school of His direct and personal dealings
with us, and of our direct and personal dealings with Him, that His
character is the most experimentally unfolded, His perfections are
the most distinctly made known, and His glory passes before our eye. To this
end God tries us. "Show me now Your ways, that I may know You."
Thus, in all our temptations and trials, we trace His
wisdom in ordaining, His sovereignty in permitting, His power in
controlling, His faithfulness in directing, and His love in soothing us. And
Jesus, the tried Stone, becomes better known, and more intensely endeared,
in one fiery temptation, in one severe trial, than, perhaps,
in all the passing events of our history combined.
The second object God would compass is, our personal
benefit. Our personal religion advances in the same ratio with our
spiritual and experimental acquaintance with God in Christ Jesus. By the
process of temptation or trial to which He subjects us, we know ourselves
better, are more deeply instructed in the knowledge of the word, are
emptied, humbled, proved; are taught our own weakness, learn wherein our
great strength lies, and that, upheld only by the power of God, we are kept
from falling and are preserved unto His kingdom and glory.
By this process, also, the work of moral purification
advances--the alloy is consumed, the vile is eliminated from the precious,
and the believer emerges from the season of temptation--tried, purified, and
made white. "Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth
a vessel for the finer." Placed in the furnace, it may be, in the mass,
shapeless and unlovely, such the wondrous transformation, it comes forth a
vessel divinely molded, symmetrically formed, exquisitely pencilled--a
vessel of honor fit for the Master's use.
Thus are we to interpret God's more immediate hand in the
temptations or trials of His saints. But there are other sources of
temptation to which the saints are exposed.
There are the temptations that arise from the power of
SATAN. It is astounding what opposite and what false views men entertain
of the devil. There are ill-informed and timid religionists who almost
deify him, by ascribing to him the attributes of omniscience and
omnipresence which belong alone to God. Then there are those who, in this
Sadducean age, go far to deny his very existence, or who, if
admitting that there is a devil, divest him of his power and wrest from him
his influence. Oh, it is a solemn thing to trifle with the Evil One, either
by exalting his attributes, or by ignoring his existence. But he is the
great tempter and accuser of the brethren. Our first parents fell like
stately cedars before his arm, and we, the offspring of a fallen father,
who, like the tinder, are ready to ignite with every spark that is struck,
are not exempt from his fiery darts.
No more, if our merciful High Priest was in all points
tempted like as we from this very source, who are we to expect exemption
from his assaults? Be not, then, dismayed at the skeptical doubts he
insinuates, at the bold blasphemies he suggests, at the profane and impure
thoughts he engenders, or at any mode by which he assails the foundation of
your faith, and tempts you to give up Christ and cast away your confidence.
There is not a moment that he is not plotting your downfall, but there is
not a moment that Christ is not upholding you on earth and interceding for
you in heaven.
Then there is the believer's temptation from the WORLD.
We must pass through it, for there is no escape. It is the empire of the
Evil One, and it is the empire of evil. It is essentially and
emphatically an evil world, all its works evil, and nothing but evil.
The ungodliness of the world is appalling. Whether we view it in its savage
or its civilized state, in its refined or its gross forms of society, "we
know that the whole world lies in wickedness," or, in the wicked one. Thus
from every quarter is the world a snare and a temptation to the God's
children. Awed by its frowns we may be dissuaded from taking up Christ's
cross, seduced by its smiles we may be persuaded to lay it down. Our very
circumstances in life may expose us to peculiar temptation. Affluence may
ensnare us into wasteful extravagance and worldly living; poverty may tempt
us to depart from strict uprightness and integrity; a moderate position may
tempt us to better ourselves by wild and ruinous speculation.
And then there is the worldliness of the world--how
powerful and ever-present a snare is this to the child of God. "Demas has
forsaken me, having loved this present world," is the sad record of many a
religious professor once standing so high, but now swept away and no more
walking with Jesus, by the resistless current of the world's gaieties, the
world's enterprises, and even the world's religion.
But what a scene of temptation is there WITHIN THE
CHRISTIAN. It is here--perhaps a foe, a spy, or a traitor within the
citadel--his greatest danger lies. From this there is no escape. "The sin
that dwells in us" is that lurking spy, the wicked heart throbbing within
our breast, "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked," is that
concealed traitor. From this, I reiterate, there is no escape. Go where we
may, plunge into the pathless desert, escape to the mountain solitudes, hide
in the caves of the earth, buried in a monastery, imprisoned in a nunnery,
immured in a hermit's cell, still the traitor lurks within, prepared,
at any moment, to open the gate and admit the besieging foe.
In the eloquent words of a writer already quoted, "In no
scene of earth, in no condition, are we exempt from the incursions of
temptation. If we flee to the desert, and avoid the sight of our
fellow-creatures' face, we bear there the fiend within; we cannot bar out
the indwelling devil. The gratings of the monastery cannot exclude the wings
of the fallen seraph, nor solitude sanctify the unregenerate heart. In the
garden or the grove, the palace or the hermitage, the crowded city or the
howling wilderness, SIN tracks us and SELF haunts us. If the poor are
tempted to envy and dishonesty; the rich, as Agur testified, are equally
endangered by pride and luxury. If the man of ten talents is puffed up with
self-confidence and arrogant impiety, the man of one talent is prone to bury
slothfully the portion entrusted to him in the earth, and then to quarrel
with its Holy Giver. The great adversary has in every scene his snares, and
varies his baits for every age and variety of condition and character. Each
man and child has his besetting sin. The rash and the cautious, the young
and the old, the crude and the educated, the visitant of the sanctuary and
the open neglecter of it, the profane and the devout, the lover of solitude
and the lover of society--all have their snares. Satan can misquote
Scripture and misinterpret providence, and preach presumption or despair,
heresy or superstition, or infidelity, as he finds best. He can assume the
sage, the sophist, or the buffoon, the religionist or the statesman at will.
He spares not spiritual greatness. Paul was buffeted. The most eminent of
God's saints, of the Old Testament and the New--Noah, Abraham, David,
Hezekiah, and the apostles, have suffered by him. He spares not the season
of highest spiritual profiting. Before you rise from your knees, his
suggestions crowd the devout heart. Before the sanctuary is left, his
emissaries, as birds of the air, glean away the scattered seeds of truth
from the memory. When our Lord Himself had been, at His baptism, proved from
heaven as the Son of God, He was led away by the Spirit in the wilderness to
be tempted. And how often does some fiery dart pound on the Christian's
armor, just after some season of richest communion with his God. Descend
from the mount of revelation with Moses, and at its foot is an idolatrous
camp dancing around a golden calf. Come down with entranced apostles from
the Mount of Transfiguration; and the world whom there you encounter, are a
grief to the Holy One by their unbelieving cavils. As John Newton pithily
said--'It is the man bringing his dividend from the bank door who has most
cause to dread the pilferer's hand.'
Yes, temptation spared not Christ Himself. Even His
mother and brethren tempted Him, when the one would prescribe to
Him the season and scene of putting forth His veiled godhead at the
marriage-feast of Cana of Galilee; and when the other would have hurried the
hour of His going up to the temple at Jerusalem. Disciples tempted
Him when they cried, 'Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!', to His
predictions of His mediatorial sufferings; and quarreled about the division
of seats in His kingdom. The multitude tempted Him when they would be
received as the disciples, not of His truth, but of His loaves, and were
eager to force upon the 'Antagonist of all carnalism in religion' a carnal
crown, and a carnal throne, and a carnal policy. The lawyer and the
Pharisees tempted Him with questions as to the tribute-money for Caesar, and
as to the weightiest matters of the law, and as to the sanctity of the
Sabbath and the temple; and the Sadducee continued the work on
another side with cavils as to the resurrection and the law of divorce.
Satan buffeted Him at the introduction of His public ministry; and, as
we gather from the prophetic Psalms, at the close of Christ's earthly course
renewed his assaults by the most ferocious onset, when 'the bulls of Bashan
and the dogs' of hell bellowed and howled against the meek and Atoning Lamb.
Describing His own career, and bidding farewell to His little flock, He
called them those who 'had continued with Him in His temptations;' as if all
the pathway which they had trodden at His side had led through a field
strewn with snares and pitfalls at every step. And besides all these, the
temptations which Scripture has expressly indicated, how constant and severe
must have been the pressure of temptation, not explicitly described by the
New Testament, against which His human nature must have been necessarily
called to struggle in controlling the exhibition at times of the indwelling
Godhead. Had we been vested with Divine Sovereignty and Lordship over twelve
legions of angels, could our human endurance have brooked, like His, the
injustice and cowardice of Roman praetors and the insolence of Jewish
kinglings, whose faces a glance of His Divine eye could have moldered into
ashes? Had we His omniscience, could we have locked it down and kept it
under restraint from exposing in open day the hidden enormities of the
hypocritical foes that confronted and pursued Him along all His meek and
beneficent way? Had we the resources of the wide universe at our command,
could we have brooked the crown of thorns, the mock scepter of reed, the
society of malefactors, and the cross, with all its agony and all its
ignominy? O spiritual Joseph of Your Church! the archers sorely
grieved You, and from every quiver and with every bow shot at You, that You
might in all points be tempted like your brethren, and teach them how to
meet and endure temptation. Every arrow that pierces us left its point and
its venom in You; and falls at our feet quenched and harmless. Yet we fly to
You in this time of our temptation, for sympathy and support, and ask that
every 'fiery dart' may impel us closer beneath Your sheltering wing, that we
may know You more, and love You better, and learn of You to support those
who are tempted."
Turn we now to THE PETITION ITSELF, "Lead us not
into temptation." Two remarks seem necessary to its clearer understanding.
The first is, that entire exemption of the believer from temptation would
be entire exemption from some of the greatest blessings of his life.
This, therefore, cannot be included in the prayer. Had Abraham been
exempted from the trial of offering up his son Isaac, there would have been
lacking that illustrious exhibition of his faith, which in all future ages
has been, and to all future ages will be, the instruction and comfort of the
faithful. Had Hezekiah been exempt from the temptation of display
and pride, when he paraded his treasures and his wealth before the
ambassadors of Babylon, what a loss had been that record of his spiritual
history! Had Peter been exempt from the temptation to deny his Lord,
it would seem as if the Bible had been incomplete without that wondrous page
which records the Savior's anticipatory intercession on behalf of His
devil-tempted disciple--"Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift
you as wheat; but I have prayed for you; that your faith fail not." Had
Paul been exempt from the "thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to
buffet him," what a loss to the Church of Christ had been the marvelous
declaration which that temptation of the apostle elicited from the Savior,
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in
weakness."
And, most of all, had our blessed Lord been exempt
from the temptation in the wilderness--His forty days and forty nights'
conflict with Satan--what chapter of the Bible could have supplied that
precious truth--"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 were WE, beloved, entirely excluded from this same
fiery ordeal of temptation, what a dead-letter, what a sealed book, would
much of God's own Word be in our experience. We cannot, therefore, suppose
that this petition is a prayer for exemption from what all the saints of
God, and the Son of God Himself, have more or less passed through. This
would be, as I have remarked, to exempt us from some of the deepest
instruction and holiest blessings of our spiritual history.
Our second remark is that, we are not to infer from
the petition that God can solicit men to evil. This seems to require no
argument; and yet the Holy Spirit has met the idea--"Let no man say when he
is tempted, I am tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempts he any man." And yet the dark, the malignant thought, has
found a lodgment in many a guilty breast--"If God had not placed me
in this position, I would not have fallen into this sin." No! is the solemn
and indignant reply--but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of
his own lust, and enticed. "Now, when lust has conceived, it
brings forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death." Oh it
is a solemn thing--an act of daring brazenness, fearfully augmenting our
guilt--to charge God with the responsibility of our sin! What
is this but to make Him the Author of sin?
But the petition is a prayer that God would, by His
providence, keep His child out of the way of temptation. "My Father,
consign me to no place in which I may be tempted to sin against You, to
dishonor the Name of Jesus, to grieve the Holy Spirit, and to bring
discredit upon my Christian profession." We can suppose a young believer
just entering upon public life, bending before the mercy-seat, and sending
up this petition to Heaven, "My Father, I am about to detach myself from the
hallowed restraints of the parental roof, from the guardianship of those
who, from infancy and childhood, have watched over me with an eye of love
that has never slumbered or wearied--may You be the Guide of my youth, and
allow me to embark upon no career of life which will expose me to peculiar
and overpowering temptations. I am deficient in experience, limited in
wisdom, feeble in strength, pliable and irresolute, soon and easily led
astray. My Father, lead me not into temptation. Let me not dwell in
Potiphar's house, nor pitch my tent towards Sodom, nor flee into Zoar, nor
sit with the servants in the palace of the high priest, nor heed any price
for the betrayal of my Lord. Allow me not to be tempted above that I am able
to bear. My Father, lead me not into temptation. The prayer of Your servant
Jabez would I make my own–'Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my
coast, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from
evil, that it may not grieve me!'"
Oh, what a solemn, wise, and holy prayer is this! Is it
yours, my young reader? Is it the exponent of the thoughts, and feelings,
and desires now rising within your soul? Then God, even your Father in
heaven, will answer it, as He did the prayer of Jabez, and, by His
providence, so dispose of you as that you shall not be exposed to the
temptation you thus so holily and earnestly deprecate; or, if exposed, will
sustain you under it.
It is a prayer, also, that God would either weaken the
power, or remove entirely all existing temptation. The temptation is a
formidable one. It assails you, perhaps, in the most vulnerable and
least-defended part of your nature. It presents itself in its most
fascinating and irresistible form. You are conscious of its power. It is
just the thing which your imagination has often pictured, and which your
heart has often craved. It holds you like a charmed bird within its
serpent-like spell, and you feel but little inclination, still less power,
to break it and escape. And yet, alive to your danger, trembling and lowly,
you bend before the Mercy-Seat, and lift up your prayer--"My Father, I am a
weak, helpless child, safe only as I am out of the way of temptation, or
sheltered beneath Your outspread wing. You know my present assault, and how
impotent I am to resist it. Weaken its force, or give me grace to overcome
it, or remove it entirely from my path. Lead me not into temptation."
It is a petition, also, that God would not withdraw
His restraining check from the believer. It is said of Hezekiah, that
"God left him to his own heart." How often, for the moment, has this been
the sad history of some of the most eminent saints--as eminent for the
greatness of their sin as for the greatness of their grace. Lot,
dwelling in Zoar--David, walking upon the roof of his house--Solomon,
in his years of mellowed experience and wisdom--Peter, sitting among
the servants of the high priest's court--Cranmer signing an
renouncement of his faith--were all left to know what was in their heart,
and a host more of illustrious saints, whose histories present a solemn
comment upon the apostolic exhortation, "Let him that thinks he stands take
heed lest he fall."
But each and all were the subjects of restoring grace,
emerging from the fiery ordeal through which they passed, sadder but wiser
and holier men. When, then, you pray, "Lead me not into temptation," you ask
of God to withdraw not those divine restraints, to remove not those salutary
checks by which, as in the case of David, you may be kept from falling into
a snare. "I kept you," says God, "from sinning against me." So may God keep
us!
And does not this petition involve a prayer to be
preserved from the great tempter? Not only preservation from the evil
that is in the world, but preservation from the Evil One of the world,
should be our daily prayer. With the galling consciousness of having lost
his prey, with all the fiendish malignity of a foiled foe, with his ancient
inveterate hate of the Christ of God, Satan traverses the earth bent upon
the destruction of the saint. It is not with the dead but the living soul he
more especially has to do. The dead, well he knows, are floating silently
and surely down with the stream that sweeps them on to the dread gulf where
they are borne. Marvel not, then, that you should be a selected object of
his assault, distinguished, I had almost said, by the especial envy and
malignity of his attack. These very fiery darts hurled so fiercely at your
soul, these strong temptations by which your faith, integrity, and hope are
assailed, but evidence the life of God within you. Do you suppose for a
moment that he would waste his ammunition upon a spiritually dead sinner?
that he would suggest to a victim, still chained and pinioned by his
resistless power, the imaginary crime of having committed the sin against
the Holy Spirit? that his transgressions were too many and his guilt of too
deep a hue to come within the scope and power of divine forgiveness? Would
he, the Evil One, place his mouth to the ear of a soul dead in trespasses
and in sins, and with the softest whisper breathe into it those blasphemous
thoughts, those infidel doubts, those sinful suggestions, those promptings
to presumption and despair, of which Bunyan and Cowper and Newton were once
the victims, and of which a cloud of witnesses in God's Church still are?
No; it is only the lambs he frightens, the sheep he worries,
the children of God whose downfall he plots. Let us, then, in our
daily prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," include yet this needed
petition, "and keep me from the power of the tempter." You approach One who
has been tempted by this same foe, than whom none in the Church of the
tempted could enter so intelligently and feelingly into your case.
"O You! the sinner's only Friend,
On You alone my hopes depend,
That You will guard me to the end,
My Savior!
"I do not weep that joys are fled,
Or those so fondly loved are dead;
For greater griefs my tears are shed,
My Savior!
"The Accuser seems so constant near,
And almost drives me to despair,
That ne'er again Your voice I'll hear,
My Savior!
"He taunts me with my sins, dear Lord,
And tempts me sore to doubt Your word,
That not for me was shed Your blood,
My Savior!
"Oh, come, You Holy, Heavenly Dove,
Fill my lone heart with Your pure love,
And let me rise to joys above,
My Savior!
"Then shall I walk in peace with God,
Nor fear to tread the thorny road,
But kiss the hand that bears the rod,
My Savior."
Some PRACTICAL AND SOLEMN CONCLUSIONS naturally flow from
the important subject of the present chapter. While praying not to be led
into temptation, we should be watchful against voluntarily running into
it. There is such a thing as tempting the tempter. Although we can be in
no position entirely exempt from his assaults, we yet may incautiously and
needlessly expose ourselves to some powerful onslaught of the foe. Thus it
was with Peter. Where should he have been when his Divine Master was under
arrest? Side by side with Him at the bar of the high priest. "But Peter
stood at the door outside." He had already paved the path of his downfall by
"following Christ afar off." And when he stood and warmed himself with the
servants and officers of the court--the congregated enemies of his Lord--it
is not surprising that before a very mild assault--a little maid charging
him with the crime of being Christ's disciple--he fell as a star from its
orbit. What a beacon light for us!
If we needlessly go into the world, if we sinfully sit
among the foes of the Redeemer, and associate with the scoffers at
religion--if we cross the boundary between the Church and the world and
fraternize with the assailants of the truth, the condemners of revelation,
the avowed foes of the Bible--if we are found in association with the
Antichrist of Rationalism, or the Antichrist of Ritualism, or the Antichrist
of Formalism, thus presumptuously venturing within the enemies' lines, what
marvel if we find ourselves looked upon as deserters by the loyal, or are
arrested as prisoners of war by the enemy! While, then, praying not to be
led into temptation, we have need to be upon our watch-tower, lest we be
surprised by the besieger at the gate. "Sin lies at the door" ready to
spring in the moment it is incautiously unlocked or too widely opened.
Mark the unselfishness of the petition, "Lead US
not into temptation." If I am a true child of God, I am to embrace in my
intercession each member of the brotherhood exposed, like myself, to
temptation. I am to regard the holiness and happiness of my brother, as
second only to my own. No, seeing that by our incorporation into the same
body of Christ, we are members one of another, his preservation from
temptation, his upholding in temptation, his deliverance out of temptation,
should be a matter of as deep concern to me as my own. Seeing that, perhaps,
in consequence of his talents, his popularity, his elevated and responsible
position, he is a more conspicuous target for the Archer--standing, it may
be, as upon a lofty pinnacle of the temple--how fervent and earnest should
be my prayerful intercession in his behalf.
To this end ought we to send up our petition for
missionaries and ministers, for pastors and evangelists, for directors,
secretaries, and treasurers to whose fidelity are entrusted the momentous
and precious interests of Christ's truth and kingdom. Is there not a grave
defect in our practical religion touching this matter? Is there not too
little consideration of the responsibility of these servants of our Lord,
too little sympathy with their dangers and their trials, and too little
intercessory prayer for their divine upholding, begirt and assailed as they
are by many peculiar and strong temptations? If Moses needed, and Paul
craved, and Christ leaned upon the prayers and the sympathy of the saints,
how much more these our brethren!
And in whose Name is this petition, as, indeed,
the whole prayer, to be offered but the Name of Him who taught it--Himself
the Tempted One. There is not a view of the subject of this chapter so
instructive and soothing as the life of temptation to which our Lord Himself
was exposed. I say the life of temptation, for from the moment that His feet
touched the horizon of our planet, to the moment that He sprang from earth
into heaven, His whole course was one continuous battle with temptation, in
some of its many forms, and from some of its countless sources. His mother
tempted Him on the occasion of His first miracle at Cana to a rash unveiling
of His deity. His brethren tempted him on the one hand to avoid His
sufferings, while His disciples on the other hand tempted Him to forego them
altogether. The excited populace would have forced upon Him a crown, while
the subtle lawyer would have entrapped Him into an act of disloyalty to
Caesar. The ritualistic Pharisee tempted Him touching the weightier matters
of the law, while the infidel Sadducee assailed Him with cavils at the
mystery of the resurrection. To this must be added the incessant and fierce
buffetings of Satan, from the period that, baffled in the encounter, "he
left Him for a season" in the wilderness, until his last onslaught in
Gethsemane and his final defeat on the cross. O crowned and adorable Victor!
all these temptations endured in Your person were for me, that You might be
"touched with the feeling of my infirmities, and be in all points tempted
like as I am, and yet without sin." Tempted believer! to the sympathy and
the support, to the grace and protection of this tempted Savior resort. "He
knows what sore temptations mean, for He has felt the same."
You will not find in the whole Church of God, even among
those who have most fiercely struggled with the arch-tempter, one who can so
clearly understand you, so tenderly sympathize with you, and
so effectually shield you as Jesus. He taught you the petition, "Lead
us not into temptation." He counsels you to watch and pray lest you enter
into temptation. He anticipates your temptation by intercession, that your
faith should not fail. And when the temptation actually comes, He enfolds
you within the robe of His sympathy, and encircles you with the shield of
His might, for "in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able
to support those who are tempted."
If such the fiery ordeal, and such the difficult
salvation of the righteous, who are "scarcely saved," how fearful, how fatal
your condition who still are entangled within the coils of the serpent, led
captive by him at his will! Unregenerated by God's Spirit, unconverted by
His grace, your whole life is one scene, one series, one act of temptation.
Error tempts you, and you fall. Ritualism tempts you, and you
yield. The world tempts you, and you are seduced. Wealth
tempts you, and you are ensnared. Sin tempts you, and you comply. But
what will the end of these things be? Oh, too fearful to contemplate, too
terrific to describe. An eternal hell! Forever with the tempter!
Reaping the wages of sin, and receiving the due and the just reward of your
unrighteous deeds. "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who
among us shall dwell with ever lasting burnings?" All, all who have denied
the truth, who have hated God, who have neglected salvation; who have
rejected the Savior, and who have lived and died the followers of the world,
the slaves of lust, the servants of sin, and the vassals of Satan--there,
these are as fuel seasoning for the last and the unquenchable fire. But yet
there is hope! You are within its region and hope's grasp. Repent, and be
converted! The Ark is still open, the life-boat floats at your side, the
City of Refuge is within your reach, a loving, beseeching Savior invites you
to the asylum of His wounds, to hide you there from the wrath that is to
come!