IF It is not true to say that the devil arranged the temptation. Temptation here is in the Divine plan and purpose. Jesus went into the wilderness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to find the devil. My own conviction is that if the devil could have escaped that day, he would have done so. It is a very popular fallacy that the enemy drove Christ into a corner and tempted Him. But the whole Divine story reveals that the facts were quite otherwise. God's perfect Man, led by the Spirit, or as Mark in his own characteristic and forceful way expresses it, driven by the Spirit, passes down into the wilderness, and compels the adversary to stand out clear from all secondary causes, and to enter into direct combat. This is not the devil's method. He ever puts something between himself and the man he would tempt. He hides his own personality wherever possible. To our first parents he did not suggest that they should serve him, but that they should please themselves. Jesus dragged him from behind everything, and put him in front, that for once, not through the subtlety of a second cause, but directly, he might do his worst against a pure soul.^
H The initiative in this temptation was not taken by Satan ; it was taken by the Holy Spirit. He displayed masterly general- ship. He did not wait until the tempter came, but obliged the
^ George Hodges.
^ G. Campbell Morgan, The Crises of the Christ, 133.
ST. MARK 25
tempter to come. He forced the fighting. It was a fine bit of generalship. We ought to follow His lead far more there. Most of us, may I say, v/ait until we are tempted, and then, half-scared, seek for help. But we should always pray ahead, and take the ground before the Evil One can come. That is what the wondrous Holy Spirit does here. He forestalls the Evil One.^
•IF At one time Mr. Moody was on an ocean liner, in a great storm, and they were sure the boat was going to the bottom. They were all praying; everybody prays in a bad storm, you know. A gentleman has told that he went to one of the decks, and to his great surprise he saw Mr. Moody standing on the deck, not in the prayer meeting down below, but standing quietly looking out over the raging waters. And he said, " Mr. Moody, aren't you down in the prayer meeting ? " And in his quiet way Mr. Moody said, " Oh ! I am prayed up." There is a marvellous generalship in praying ahead.^
1. The temptation of Jesus was part of God's deliberate plan and purpose. So is the temptation of every man. Yet " no man can say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God." Nor does the fact that God ordains the temptation relieve the instrument of his responsibility. After the crucifixion of Christ, Peter charged the Jews with having taken Him and by wicked hands having crucified and slain Him, although in the same sentence he said that He had been delivered to death by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
And this distinction between the ordainer and the agent of temptation is not one of words. For not only does the with- drawal of anything, save positive sin, from the sphere of God's will, affect the integrity of His moral government of the race, and relax the hold which God has on the progress of human affairs, but the teaching of Scripture is to be reconciled with itself only by bearing in mind that God may ordain a moral discipline for the soul, of which it is impossible He should be the instrument and immediate cause. We are told, for example, by St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man " ; and yet we are equally told, " It came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham " ; and if it be said that this only means that God did try
> S. D. Gordon. « Ibid.
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26 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
Abraham, the difficulty is removed but a step further back, for trial is always temptation, just as temptation is always trial. The true solution of the apparent contradiction seems to be suggested by the typical temptation of Christ, that whilst God Himself never does offer, and never can offer, personal seduction or inducement, to sin to the soul — the supposition itself is utterly blasphemous— yet God may permit, and may will, that the soul should pass through temptation as the only means of that purifying and strengthening discipline to which we referred in the first chapter, as the chief object and result of all moral trial of every kind. And hence it is that the same temptation may be said, from one point of view, to come from God, and from another, to come from the devil.
IT Perhapn the most striking illustration of this truth to be found in Scripture is the numbering of the people by David. It is said, in the Book of Samuel, to have been the result of God " moving " David " against " Israel ; whilst in the parallel history of the Book of Chronicles we read, "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." ^