Notes of the third of three messages on temptation.
In previous articles we have considered the inclusive scope of the temptation of our Lord. Every area of it we can ever know He has faced. Then we saw how He silenced the tempter in every realm, seeing him retreat vanquished, and Jesus coming out unscathed.
Now let us look at the sequel to this great combat. Try to forget just for a moment what you know about our Lord’s subsequent life, and see Him now at the end of the temptation. Satan has withdrawn and Jesus is left alone. He …
Notes of the second of three messages on temptation.
We considered last month the tremendous scope of the temptation of our Lord—not an area that touches us that has not first touched Him, and been overthrown by Him. Therefore He has the answer to every battle any of us ever have to fight.
Now we are to think of the way in which He silenced the tempter; how He hurled back every fiery dart, and emerged from the conflict utterly victorious. I believe that the devil would have avoided that encounter if he could. It is not the record of …
Notes on the first of three messages on temptation.
Let us give serious consideration to this passage of Scripture, containing an account, which must have been given by our Lord Himself, of the temptation He endured in the wilderness. We see Him emerging from thirty years of private life. Surely He had known temptation there, too, and often Satan must have flung his insinuating darts into His mind concerning the love of God and the unfairness of God who allowed His Son to suffer such poverty. But upon those thirty years the Father has smiled with satisfaction and said, “This …
“And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the host; and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure; come not …
“O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea”—Isaiah 48:18
There is something about the very tone and content that claims my immediate attention, for here is a lament from the heart of God. There is a suggestion here that things might not have been what they are, that they needn’t have been what they have been, if only I had hearkened unto His command. There is a suggestion too that this word is not spoken to us by some ruthless dictator seeking to …
“That by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us; which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”—Hebrews 6:18–19
There is an ancient legend that the gods filled a box with blessings and gave it to Pandora, the first woman, for safe keeping. She opened it incautiously and everything in it escaped except hope. But Pandora, with hope in her box, was richer than she could have been if every …
“Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it. And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh, spake Joshua, saying, Remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, The Lord your God hath given you rest, and hath given you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your …
“Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”—Ephesians 4:30
The “sealing” of the Holy Spirit is referred to in the first chapter, verse 13, and the reference there is to the experience that came to the church at Ephesus at its beginning, as recorded in the 19th chapter of Acts. It was to this experience Paul referred when he said: “After that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” And here …
In 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, we read, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
What a ministry of comfort we find in God’s Word! Here we have God our Father spoken of as the “God of all comfort.” In John chapters 14, 15, and 16, we read of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, and in 1 …
In commencing a series of messages based on the book of Revelation, it is important to make one or two preliminary observations. We must be careful that we don’t miss seeing the wood for the trees, and lose the great message of the book in grappling with points of interpretation.
I. Setting Of The Book.
It is the one prophetic book of the New Testament. The Bible, which began with the story of creation, soon records the fact of the Fall, and then there follows the long story of human sin into which is …
