DEVILS VOICE 3 of 4

“I Give This Authority….If….”

"And he led him up, and showed him all the king­doms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority and the glory of them; for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall be thine."—LUKE 4:5-7.

We come now to a consideration of the third and last occasion upon which the voice of the devil is heard in the writings of Holy Scripture. I read the lesson from Matthew, but have taken the text from Luke, because I believe that Matthew records the true order of the temptations. Luke puts them in another order, which he did for a certain purpose, that of the delinea­tion of our Lord from the standpoint from which he wrote. I believe we get the true order of the temptations that our Lord confronted in the wil­derness in Matthew. The first was physical—bread. The second was spiritual—trust in God. This third was vocational. There we have the true order of human personality. The first, the basis, is physical; but the essential is spiritual, and the ultimate is always vocational.

It is a great temptation to stay there for a length of time. I do not propose to do so, but it is best to remember that this order is so in every case. The first fact is the physical. If I meet you, I meet you physically. I shake hands with you—well, I may do! That is physical. After a little while I get nearer to you, and I am touching the essential fact of your personality, which is spiritual. Then the ultimate meaning of every human life is not being, but purpose. "To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world," said Jesus upon one occasion (John 18:37); His physi­cal being, and His spiritual being, creating the mystery and wonder and glory of His personal­ity; but there was a purpose in it. It is always so.

So here we get the devil's temptations proceed­ing along the threefold line of the personality of our Lord: the first, bread; the second, trust in God; and, thirdly, the vocational purpose of His being, the purpose of His coming into the world.

I took my text from Luke because in this third phase of the temptation story he used another word than the one Matthew used. I am not sug­gesting that Matthew was wrong, because the two words have the same implication. In Mat­thew we read, "He showed him all the kingdoms of the world," the kosmos. Luke does not say that. He said he showed Him "all the kingdoms of the economy." Our word economy is a trans­literation of the Greek word oikoumene. That was the word Luke used here. Now the word kosmos for world was often used in the same way, but I think Luke interprets the extent of the vision very largely granted to our Lord by the use of that particular word economy. We will come back to a consideration of the word a little more particularly later.

Once more we hear the voice of the devil, and never again do we hear that voice. We shall find him after this, more clearly seen than ever before, but he never speaks. For the last time here in Holy Scripture the voice of the devil is heard. What is he doing now? He is seen, arrestingly enough, confronted by the God-man, and con­fronting the God-man. First he slandered God to man when he spoke. Then he slandered man to God when he spoke. Now we see him con­fronting the God-man, and hear him speaking. That is our subject in this article.

Of course the whole story is necessary in some ways, his temptation in the realm of bread and of trust in God. But I am ultimately interested in this final phase of the temptation when he con­fronted the God-man, and offered Him—forgive the phrase, I know no better—a short cut to His goal as an alternative to the taking of the way to that goal for which He had come into the world, which was within the will and covenant of His Father. Quite simply there are three things I want us to do; first of all, to note a little more carefully than we have done in these intro­ductory sentences the historic occasion; sec­ondly, to consider the bid he made that day; and of course that leading us, thirdly, to the answer of the God-man to the temptation of Satan.

Now I am going to express my deep convic­tion, which I do not think is shared by everyone, but it is worthy of consideration. To put it very bluntly, I think if the devil could have escaped that hour he would have done so. I think he was compelled to confront the God-man. Consider the story as it is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and in each case notice with what particu­lar care the evangelists speak of the way by which Jesus came to confront the devil. For in­stance, here we read that He "was led by the Spirit in the wilderness," led of the Spirit to be tempted. In another evangelist we read Jesus was driven forth into the wilderness to be tempted. I never look back at that and consider it carefully without believing that Satan was compelled to that hour, and to come forth at last to the full and final unveiling of his devilishness, confront­ing the God-man. If his devices are known, to quote from Paul, we are not ignorant of his de­vices; Paul did not say that his wiles were known. The devices are conceptions, purposes, and plans. His wiles are his methods. We are not ignorant of his devices, because we have a revelation of them. Paul had it from the Old Testament Scrip­tures, and the devil's purpose is perfectly obvious, but not the wiles of Satan.

Whereas I have said that we do not know the wiles of Satan, that is a statement that applies to the details, not to general principles; because we do, in the light of this whole story of the tempta­tion, know not only his purposes, but we know his wiles, that is, his methods. We remember how Paul said, "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." The word wiles means his methods. Another word is faltering on my lips, which expresses it, the tricks of the devil. Now to go back; we know his purposes. We are not ignorant of his purposes, or of his wiles. It is best that we should remember in this story of the temptation of our Lord that every avenue of the devil's approach to the soul of man is re­vealed. We are all familiar with Bunyan's Pil­grim's Progress. I wonder how many of my younger friends are familiar with his Holy War. I think it is a far greater book even than his Pilgrim's Progress. There he describes the at­tacks of evil on Mansoul, always under the mili­tary figure. It is a marvelous book. Get that idea, because, my brethren, in the last analysis any attack upon humanity is an attack upon in­dividuals. We speak of humanity in the mass, and we are warranted in doing so. And yet hu­manity in the mass is but the sum totality of in­dividual souls, and Satan's method must always be with the individual, just as the method of the Gospel is with the individual. You cannot evan­gelize a nation unless you evangelize men and women who make up the nation. The approach of God and the devil to man, to humanity, must be through individuals. The devil has only three avenues of approach, and they are all revealed here in the wilderness. One is, as we have said, the physical. The second is the spiritual; and the third is the vocational. If I may again put that in very simple form, if the devil wishes to ruin a man he will probably begin with the physical in some form or another. I need not elaborate that. Then, if perhaps the man attacked in the physical fails, he is weakened in the essential part of his nature, which is the spiritual. If he is victorious, then the next line of attack is against the essential, the spiritual; and at last the devil will attack every human soul, and attempt to spoil the purpose of being, attack the vocational.

I repeat, if we want to know what the wiles of the devil are, the methods of the devil, whereas there are no details here, they are differentiated a myriad of old. In essence there is no one reading these articles who are tempted of the devil except along one of those three lines: bread, trust, pur­pose.

So we stand here in the presence of the occa­sion when the devil was driven to face one Man, one human Being, representative of humanity, God's humanity; and he came to Him confront­ing humanity as the offspring of God. Now, it is interesting to notice that when Luke intro­duces Him with a genealogy, he does not give the genealogy of Jesus according to the law. Mat­thew gives us that through His father by adop­tion. Luke gives us His genealogy through His mother, through Mary. The lines are identical up to a certain point, and then they divide. We have seen in Luke, when he has traced this line back through David to Abraham, he goes to the beginning, and says, "Who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God." Do not miss that. In that sense humanity is, as the Greek poets said and Paul quoted, "offspring of God." Here is Man, offspring of God, human, Son of God: God's "second Man," as Paul called Him, God's "last Adam" as Paul also called Him; He is con­fronting evil, and evil is confronting Him. As we look at that Man in the wilderness, fainting there, and alone in the desert; as we look at Him there after forty days, the physical side of His nature weakened by the strength of hunger—I state that carefully—and all His spiritual nature put to the test by reason of the circumstances in which He found Himself; and all the purpose of His coming into the world in front of Him, as it had been made known to Him, and known by Him had been ratified in the baptism that had just preceded this, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased"; in the hour when He had chosen to be numbered with transgressors in John's baptism; in that very hour He is seen rep­resenting humanity. He is the custodian in His own personality of all the highways to man's personality, the only highways along which Sa­tan can travel.

Now, we are not considering, except by passing reference, the advance of the devil along the ave­nues of the physical or of the spiritual, but of the vocational. What did Satan offer Jesus, our blessed Lord? What did Satan offer this Man, this Son of God, standing as Representative Man? He offered Him the kingdoms of this world, or, as Luke says, "The kingdoms of the economy." That phrase, the kingdoms of the economy, was in current use as representing the Roman Empire. Do not forget this fact, that at that period the Roman Empire had mastered the whole known world. Jesus was born into this world in the pe­riod described in history as the period of the Pax Rornana. That simply means the Roman peace, which peace consisted of a condition in which the human race was subdued, subject, subjugated, and bludgeoned into submission. That was the power of the Roman Empire. It exercised all authority and power and rule. It put it all down, and everything was subject to Rome. That was the economy. It had its divisions. What were the kingdoms of the economy at that time? Greece, Pergamos, Bithynia, Bosphorus, Syria, Pontus, Egypt, Judea. Those were the kingdoms of the economy, and in some mystic way which we cannot explain, the devil made these glories flash before the eyes and mind of Jesus. He pointed to them, the kingdoms of the economy; and he made this strange declaration. He said, all these are delivered to me. That was true, only be very careful. These were not delivered unto the devil by God. They had been delivered unto him by man. Man had yielded to him, and consequently these kingdoms had all passed under the mastery of the devil. There was no question about that. Just as there is no question that vast numbers of humanity today, the vast majority in the world today, are subjected to the government of the devil. So, then, he said, They have been deliv­ered to me. They had been delivered to him by man, not by God.

Now, he said, all these so delivered to me I will give Thee. Of course we are in the presence of the devil's lie. He was a liar, as we have seen from the beginning. I will give Thee. I make no hesitation in saying that this prince of the em­pire of darkness had no intention of yielding them to Jesus. He had no intention of resigning in favor of the Lordship of this Man that he was tempting. But it was his offer. I will give them to Thee.

He had no ability to offer them. He has con­stantly been offering them. History is the account of how the devil has been offering them at different times; and men have arisen who have sought after hegemony, the government of the world. I need not trouble you with details. You know enough of history to know the truth of my statement. He offered them to Alexander, and he was apparently successful. But there came a moment when he visited Diogenes the philoso­pher, and asked what more he could do, for he had conquered the world. Diogenes replied, "Go, learn to be wise, talk not of conquest. Conquer thine own soul, and stand out of my sunlight." That is one of the greatest utterances from a phi­losopher. When Alexander thought he had mas­tered everything, he had not done so.

The devil offered the kingdoms of the world to Tiberius, and it did appear at this time he had gained the world. He owned then, and he was governing everything. It was the period of the Pax Romana, but already it was crumbling, breaking up, falling away.

He offered them to Napoleon, and there was a period when it looked as though he was going to come into possession, but you know he did not.

He has offered them to Adolf Hitler, and he is proceeding upon the assumption that he can gain them and govern them. He is being fooled by the devil. He will never gain them, and the whole thing crumbled. Japan took his lie and attempted to conquer the world. However, be it as it may, I go back upon this dogmatic as­sertion, the offer is made by the prince of evil, the offer of the kingdoms of the world to a man again, and it is a lie. Never has the suggestion been fulfilled. It may have been apparently, for a while, but never finally.

Now, once more, how did our Lord answer this? In a most remarkable way. It was at this moment in the story of the temptation that we find our Lord spoke with direct, dogmatic, ultimate authority. If He had seemed almost to ar­gue with the devil on the first two occasions, when quoting Scripture as to the fact of bread, by quoting, Man does not live by bread alone, and as to the fact that man must be conditioned by trust and not tempt God, He did not do that now. He said, "Get thee hence, Satan." It was the last blasphemy, the most unutterable revela­tion of evil that Satan made when he attempted to deflect the perfect personality, God's Man, from the appointed pathway that He must travel along and gain possession of the kingdoms of the world. Our Lord dismissed him with that terrific word, "Get thee hence, Satan." And more, "For it is written." Then our Lord revealed the whole philosophy of life, physical, spiritual, vocational, as He uttered, or quoted—for He was quoting—these words, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

Notice Satan did not say a word about service. He said, If thou wilt worship me. He did not admit that there was involved in the fact of wor­ship, service. But if you worship you serve. Whatever, or whomsoever to whom you bow the knee in worship, you will serve. It is true. May I be allowed with reluctant reverence to say, if Jesus had bowed the knee and worshiped Satan for a passing moment, what would have been the result? He would have served Satan, He would have been committed to the empire of evil, He would have been confederate with the powers of darkness. Satan did not name that, but only worship. Jesus revealed the whole proc­ess and meaning, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." What­ever you worship you serve. If you worship the devil you will serve the devil.

Take some passing illustration. If you worship gold you will serve gold. If you worship fame you will serve fame. And if you worship God you will serve God. The application of that tre­mendous word is discovered through all history. Man is so constituted that he is made to worship God; and consequently to serve him. Wherever man has turned from his loyalty to God, and worshiped any other god, or gods, man, or men, ideas, or supposed truths, he has become the bond slave of the thing to which he has yielded. Here He stands, God's Man, our Master, our Lord, our Savior in all the glorious dignity of His perfect manhood, having resisted Satan as he sought to ride along the avenue of bread; and along the avenue of the spiritual, His trust in God; and now He rebutted once more and forever the attack of evil as it came up against the purpose of being, and the purpose of life. He de­clared the whole philosophy of life for Himself, and for all men in that tremendous declaration, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

All that is happening today is not the central conflict between good and evil, between God and the devil. That central conflict has been fought and won, and the victory was with good, not evil, and that goodness in Man. Yes, but the conflict is not over. If the real central conflict was fought and won in the wilderness, and ulti­mately on Calvary, the progressive conflict has gone on, and we are in the midst of the terrific force of it today. It has been fought and won at the center, and the ultimate cannot be open to question. Of the issue there can be no doubt. We are in the process today of part of the pro­cessional conflict; but behind all there is this wil­derness story; and that erect, regal dignity and glory of the God-man, finally vindicated and tri­umphant in the mystery of His Cross. By that life, by that victory, by that Cross we follow on; and if it be so that we have fellowship in His suf­ferings, and are called upon—almost unexplaina­ble word—to make up that which is behind-hand, that which follows after, in the sufferings of Christ, we count it all joy if we are privileged to be sharers in that travail through which at last the Kingdom comes.

So the voice of Satan is silenced. The conflict goes on; but the last victory is with our Lord and Master.