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Friday, February 2, 2018

SATAN IS EVICTED

SATAN IS EVICTED

"Get thee hence, Satan." Matt 4:10 


Now notice the rejection of the enemy. For the first time the Master spoke to Satan in the language of His own authority. That authority had been created by the victories He had won in the previous attacks. He had in His manhood proved stronger than the strong man armed, mightier than the terrible foe of humanity, and in that manifested strength He now addressed him, "Get thee hence, Satan." (Matt 4:10) This was no longer a challenge. IT WAS A COMMAND. All the effort and power of evil failed to encompass His capitulation, and now from that citadel of MIGHTY STRENGTH He dictated terms to the enemy without the gates, and named him Satan, the slanderer, the calum­niator, the liar.
In that authoritative word, spoken in answer to this par­ticular temptation, there was first the refusal of the devil's suggestion, and then a flashing revelation of the method by which He will yet possess the kingdoms: The enemy said, “Pay homage to me, and I Will give Thee, I will obtain these the kingdoms.” Christ virtually replied, of the world, kingdoms not by paying homage to thee, but by your eviction. The devil, the liar from the beginning, was attempt­ing to rob Christ of that which he was promising Him; was aiming, in this last desperate adventure of his malice, to cast God out of His own world. Now that is blind arrogance. The Master's answer was a word of tremendous authority, based upon the perfections of His manhood as against temptation, and also upon the victories to be won in that death from which the enemy dared to attempt to lure Him. From that moment in the wilderness until now, Christ has been repeating that word, by every victory won in the soul of man as He leads us towards being to faultlessness (Jude 24). By all the triumphs of the Cross among the nations, and by those victories to come in the final movements of the Divine program, He is repeating the irrevocable edict of the wilderness, "Get thee hence, Satan."
The order thus issued is rendered emphatic and forceful by His use of the same sword of the Spirit. Again the flash of the sword is seen as He said, "It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."  (Matt 4:10) This is true for Me and all of My followers Satan. Again He declared that He stood, in service as well as in the facts of His own being, within the will of God. He had homage for none except Jehovah, and to Him alone would He render service. How perfectly this word of the Master rebutted the argument of Satan. As in each of the previous cases so here, the command quoted had application, not to Satan, but to Himself. It was not that the Lord ordered Satan to worship God, but that He de­clared, in the presence of the enemy, that there was one all-sufficient reason for His refusal to render homage to him, namely that the Word of God enjoined that He should worship only God. Thus for the winning of victory in the pathway of specific service, He took His place as Man, and declared it impossible that He, abiding in the Divine will, should worship or serve any but God.
Notice here particularly the linking of WORSHIP and SERV­ICE, and see how this applies to the temptation. In the mind of Jesus it is evident that WORSHIP and SERVICE are closely identified, indeed, are two aspects of the same atti­tude. To WORSHIP is always to SERVE. To pay HOMAGE is ever to recognize an obligation. The enemy said nothing in his temptation about SERVICE. He asked for WORSHIP only. Christ's answer reveals the fact that to WORSHIP him would be to SERVE him. (Rom 12:1-2) This the enemy in his terrible intricacy did not declare. He had asked for WORSHIP, prom­ising that the kingdoms should then belong to Christ, Christ's reply declared that promise to be a lie, in that the act of WORSHIP would issue in the fact of SERVICE, so that the supreme authority would remain that of Satan. It was the devil's deliberate attempt to deceive the last Adam as he had deceived the first, and so to prevent the creation of the new race, as he had ensured the ruin of the first.
His answer, moreover, revealed the fact of His self-emptying, and yet His consciousness that self-emptying must issue in a perfect crowning. Not for Himself did He come to win the kingdoms, but for His Father, and yet, it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fullness, dwell, (Col 1:19) and for a period unmeasured by human calculation, by the way of the Cross He would ascend the throne, and reign over all these kingdoms. And even when in the distant ages He finally will deliver up the kingdom to the Father, yet in His eternal association with Him, He will possess and reign over the whole territory of THE kingdom of God, and not Kingdom(s).
Thus the anointed King utterly routs the enemy, and perfectly holds the citadel against this his last attack, and how great the victory is, and upon what infinite wisdom His choice of the Father's pathway was based! To have received the kingdoms from Satan (even granting for the sake of argument, that which cannot be granted, that He had ascended the throne by submission to the prince of the world) would have been to have taken a position utterly worthless. The kingdoms, in spite of all their ap­parent glory and splendor, were permeated with evil. They were the kingdom(s) of the world, that is, of the Cosmos. The very glory of them was purely material. All the splendor manifest was that of the enthronement of things material, at the cost of the death of the spiritual. To Him, therefore, it was obvious that within the splendor there lurked the shadow. The elements of destruction were surely at work. Disintegration was evident in the fact that they were kingdom(s). The plurality was a proof of weakness. There was conflict, and strife and manifestation of break-up rather than unity. Until this hour that fact remains, for those who have eyes to see. The world is still full of kingdoms, and these are armed to the teeth. If one shall move, the rest watch with envious eyes and all the finest skill of the world's statecraft is di­rected to selfish purposes, and the prevention of the enrichment of others. The evidence of weakness lies in the very fact that the devil showed Him kingdom(s). God's Man of perfect vision saw this, and clearly understood. He knew, too, that the glory was the glory of tinsel, rather than of gold. It was passing, fading, tarnished, even as He looked upon it. The splendor was undoubtedly great, but it was not lasting. It was that of the Cosmos only, and that ever lacked the element of permanence. He knew the truth of what John afterwards wrote, “The world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides forever." (1 John 2:17)
When Jesus therefore refused the offer of the devil, He refused the imperfect thing, the perishing thing; and He was able to do it because doing the will of God He Him­self, in spite of the death before Him, must abide forever, and through that death, and that alone, He was communi­cating imperishable force to all He gathered around Him­self. By the victory of His Cross the kingdoms would be of infinite value, for being permeated with righteousness under the government of God, they would be unified, and no longer should be spoken of as kingdom(s). Pass for a moment to those after-years when, His victory won and He ascended, He gave to His servant in the lonely isle visions and words, declaring the last movements in the mighty program. "The kingdom of the world is be­come the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and He shall reign forever and ever.” Note carefully "the kingdom." In the Authorized Version the reading was plural. In the Revision there is a correction which is of infinite value. "The kingdom of the world," no longer the many, but the one, “is become the kingdom," not many, but one, "of our Lord, and of His Christ." And now because He has dealt with, and cast out the element of evil, disintegration is impossible. "He shall reign for­ever and ever." (Rev 11:15) Be careful which version of the Bible you study.


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