...along with you because we're discussing the fourth
chapter of Matthew.
And we're in the sixth verse of that
fourth chapter.
It's the second temptation of Jesus.
Then the devil takes him.
That is, immediately following the first temptation, the
devil took Jesus up into the holy city.
That's Jerusalem.
And I still contend that the enemy took
Jesus to Jerusalem because he knew how sentimental
Jesus was over Jerusalem.
Oh, beloved, do you remember the incident how
he wept when Jerusalem refused to hear him
and turned from him?
Great tears of compassion and love flowed down
the face of Jesus.
He loved Jerusalem.
He was very sentimental over the city, over
the temple.
Think of the months, think of the time
that Jesus spent in the temple of Jerusalem.
And the enemy knew that if he could
take Jesus to the place where he was
most sentimental, taking him into Jerusalem, to the
temple, and there attack him in the most
subtle way possible, and he saith unto him,
If thou be the Son of God, cast
thyself down, for it is written...
And here's the old scoundrel quoting Scripture.
And he's still quoting Scripture today.
The same old devil is still quoting Scripture.
I believe that he knows Scripture better, he
can quote it better than the greatest faith
living in Israel.
He knows Scripture.
He uses it.
He quotes it.
And he had the nerve to quote Scripture
to Jesus.
And he was correct in quoting it.
And this is what he quoted.
He shall give his angel charge concerning thee,
and in their hand they shall bear thee
up, lest at any time thou dash thy
foot against a stone.
Now wherein was the temptation?
Pause a minute.
Having endeavored to seduce Jesus from his position
of unswerving loyalty to the will of God,
he now flings all the force of his
subtle art against that which was the strength
of his abiding in the will of God,
namely his perfect confidence in God.
He had the audacity to attack the Son's
perfect trust, his perfect confidence in his heavenly
Father.
Now listen to the subject.
Here is actual proposal.
Trust thyself down.
Trust thyself down!
It is a direct attempt to try to
force Jesus to act upon that principle of
trust which has been ministered to by the
selection of this particular place in the city
of the great king, in the house devoted
to his worship, at its most awe-inspiring
point.
Exercise trust in him by causing thyself to
be cast from this great height.
What was behind this suggestion?
It was a suggestion that trust most perfectly
expresses itself in bearing something unusual out of
the common to be heroic.
It was as if the enemy had said
to Jesus, there is no necessity for you
to cast thyself down.
It does not come in the ordinary line
of duty, but so much the greater opportunity
for a venture of faith.
Trust in God most perfectly expresses itself in
the doing of extraordinary things for God.
The enemy suggested that the trust of Jesus
should be put to the test and proven
by being placed outside the realm of the
commonplace.
He is saying if you really want to
show to the whole world how much you
really trust God the Father, then do the
extraordinary.
Do that which is not commonplace.
Do that heroic.
Stand before the whole world.
Cast thyself down to the ground.
And by that heroic deed you prove to
all of mankind your perfect trust in thy
heavenly Father.
You want to know something?
No.
That is still the great danger in the
life of the Christian today.
There is a thin line between trust and
presumption.
There is a thin line between faith and
presumption.
And great is the danger in our lives
when we substitute presumption for trust and for
faith.
Lots of it.
Lots.
Many a time, including the physical body, we
have substituted presumption for faith.
Many a time, in the building of some
great edifice or the performing of some great
heroic deed, we have substituted presumption for trust,
for faith.
There is a scripture that I'm going to
give you as an example, and it's so
very often misused, especially among the brethren who
are fanatical and have gone out into fanaticism.
Sure, it's scriptural.
It's in the 16th chapter of Mark.
They shall take up serpents, and if they
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt
them.
And there have been those who have used
that thinking they were exercising faith and trust.
And they have deliberately picked up serpents, expecting
those snakes not to harm them or bite
them, because they have used the scripture that
the Bible said they shall take up serpents
and they shall drink any deadly thing and
it shall not hurt them.
And they were bitten.
And they've made a fool of themselves.
And they have brought a reproach on the
things of God.
When, beloved, that was not faith, that was
not trust, that was presumption.
But I have the trust, the faith to
believe, that if I went to Macau as
a missionary and was in the will of
God and going there, and after doing everything
in the world that I could to protect
myself, if during the night I was bitten
by a scorpion, I believed that God would
undertake it on my behalf.
I believed that I could call on the
mercy of God.
I believed that I could go to a
foreign country and plead for God's protection.
If I did something ignorantly or innocently, because
of my ignorance, because I was innocent in
what I did, but because of my trust
in Him, I believed that He would take
care of me.
But if I deliberately did it, to try
to prove something to the whole world, I
cannot ask His divine protection.
In exactly the same way, we come to
praying for the sick.
Somebody comes and said, Miss Kuhlman, we want
this miraculous healing so that our godless members
of our family can know the reality of
the power of God.
We want to prove to our family, our
faith, our trust in the power of God
through this healing.
That is not the right attitude.
God does not have to prove Himself to
any man, any woman.
He does not have to prove Himself to
your godless husband through some miracle.
That godless husband of yours has the word
of God.
That's proof enough.
That godless husband of yours knows within himself
there is a God.
And upon the strength of that, he needs
to have enough manhood and enough common sense
to accept God and to accept the way
of salvation through Jesus Christ, His only begotten
Son.
For it is written, and God has given
proof of Himself to the inner man of
that husband of yours.
He doesn't have to have somebody to do
some great heroic deed or give proof of
His person and power by performing some great
miracle.
I don't have to give some outward proof
of my trust in the Lord by performing
some heroic deed.
No, beloved.
My daily, persistent life is proof enough.
What was the sin in that second temptation?
It was the sin of presumption.
And Jesus saw it.
Trust thyself down.
But Jesus said, I don't have to trust
myself down to prove my trust, my faith
in my heavenly Father.
Yes, thou art the Son of God.
This is the challenge Satan makes the second
time.
It's the same argument used in the previous
temptation, but almost certainly with a different emphasis.
In the first, in all probability, it lay
upon the word, art.
If thou art the Son of God.
Here it seems as though it must have
been upon the word, God.
If thou art the Son of God.
The emphasis would be upon the nature of
God.
In the first temptation, He has proved the
fact of His relationship, but now the appeal
is to that relationship.
He's prepared to enlarge upon the goodness of
God and the care that He bestows upon
such as put their trust in Him.
Oh, look how subtle.
Foiled and wounded at the first, by the
Master's use of the weapon of the word,
He now makes use of a self-same
weapon.
Behold the very sword of Christ in the
hands of the devil.
It flashes before us and He says it
is written.
Endeavoring to appeal to the principle of trust,
the devil made use of Scripture.
Jesus had declared that man lived not by
bread alone, but by words proceeding from the
mouth of God, and in an attempt to
urge him to a new exercise of trust,
the devil copes the word of God.
He now accepts Christ's definition of human life
as something more than animal.
He acknowledges that it is the spiritual life
that needs to be strong for the exercise
of trust, and moreover, that spiritual life is
only strong as it feeds upon the word.
So he attempts to minister to Him in
the realm of that very spiritual nature.
And it's startling.
It's appalling.
It begins to quote Scripture.
He shall give His angels charge over thee,
lest thou haply dash thy foot against a
stone.
What?
He took that from the portion of the
word of God.
The psalm that begins, He that dwelleth in
the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
Is this the description of the perfect safety
of the trusting soul?
Oh, it's beautiful.
You and I have clung to that portion
of the word of God, our trust, a
place of perfect safety in Him.
But there was a day when the devil
himself used that which is very precious to
our heart.
Turn now to the answer of Jesus.
And what weapon did He use on the
devil?
The same weapon, the word of God.
And Jesus begins with, Again.
Watch it.
Again it is written.
In the first temptation, Jesus said, it is
written.
In the second He said, again it is
written.
And in the use of the word again,
we have a revelation of our Lord's perfect
mastery of the weapon.
In comparison with Christ, the devil was a
poor swordsman.
Oh, believe me, when he attempted to use
the sword of the Spirit, he was a
mighty poor swordsman.
It would seem as though with quiet and
yet mighty movement of his strong arm, Jesus
had wrested the sword right from the hand
of Satan.
The force of the again lies in the
fact that it is an answer to Satan's
it is written.
Jesus does not deny the correctness of a
Satanic question.
But He replies to it by saying, again
it is written.
That is to say, there must be proper
use made of the words of God.
You cannot take a person of the word
of God out of its setting and use
it to prove a point.
The word of God must be kept in
its context before it can be properly used.
Please stop your machine at this point and
turn your...