Did Jesus’ wondrous, quiet calm nettle the tempter?  Was He ever keener and quieter?  He would step from the substantial boat-deck to the yielding water, He would cut Himself off from His Nazareth livelihood and step out without any resources, He would calmly walk into Jerusalem when there was a price upon His head, for so He was led by that Spirit to whose sovereignty He had committed Himself.  But He would do nothing at the suggestion of this tempter.  Jesus never used His power to show He had it, but to help somebody.  He could not.  It is against the nature of power to attempt to prove that you have it by using it.  Power is never concerned about itself, but wrapped up in practical service.  There were no theatricals about Jesus.  He was too intensely concerned about the needs of men.  There are none in God-touched men.  Elisha did not smite the waters to prove that Elijah’s power rested upon him, but to get back across the Jordan to where his work was needing him and waiting his touch.  Jesus would wear Himself out bodily in ministering to men’s needs, but He wouldn’t turn a hair nor budge a step to show that He could.  This is the touch-stone by which to know all Jesus-men.

He rebukes this quotation by a quotation that breathes the whole spirit of the passage where it is found.  Thou shalt not test God to see if He will do as He promises.  These Israelites had been testing, criticizing, questioning, doubting God.  That’s the setting of His quotation.  Jesus says that love never tests.  It trusts.  Love does not doubt, for it knows.  It needs no test.  It could trust no more fully after a test, for it trusts fully now.  Aye, it trusts more fully now, for it is trusting God, not a test.  Every test of God starts with a question, a doubt, a misgiving of God.  Jesus’ answer to the second temptation is:  love never tests.  It trusts.  Jesus keeps true in His relation to His Father.

The Devil Acknowledges the King.

Another swift shift of the scene.  Swiftness is a feature now.  In a moment of time, all the kingdoms, and all the glory of all the earth.  Rapid work!  This is an appeal to the eye.  First the palate, then the emotions, now the eye.  First the appetites, then the religious sense, now the ambition.  The tempter comes now to the real thing he is after.  He would be a god.  It is well to sift his proposition pretty keenly, on general principles.  His reputation for truthfulness is not very good, which means that it is very bad.  Who wants to try a suspicious egg?  He could have quite a number of capitals after his name on the score of mixing lies and the truth.  He has a distinct preference for the flavor of mixed lies.

Here are the three statements in his proposal.  All these things have been delivered unto me.  I may give them to whom I will.  I will give them to you.  The first of these is true.  He is “the prince of this world.”  The second is not true, because through breach of trust he has forfeited his rule, though still holding to it against the Sovereign’s wish.  The third is not true.  Clearly he hadn’t any idea of relinquishing his hold, but only of swamping Jesus.  Two parts lie:  one part truth—­a favorite formula of his.  The lie gets the vote.  A bit of truth sandwiched in between two lies.