Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
We trust God when we look to Him to deliver us in perils met in meek
acceptance of His will. We tempt Him when we expect Him to save us
from those encountered on roads that we have picked oat for
ourselves. Such presumption disguised as filial trust is the
temptation besetting the higher regions of experience, to which the
fumes of animal passions and the less gross but more dangerous airs
from the desires of the mind do not ascend. Religious men who have
conquered these have still this foe to meet. Spiritual pride, the
belief that we may venture into dangers either to our natural or to
our religious life, where no call of duty takes us, the thrusting
ourselves, unbidden, into circumstances where nothing but a miracle
can save us-these are the snares which Satan lays for souls that
have broken his coarser nets. The three answers with which Jesus
overcame are the mottoes by which we shall conquer. Trust God, by
whose will we live. Worship God, in whose service we get all of this
world that is good for us. Tempt not God, whose angels keep us in
our ways, when they are His ways, and who reckons trust that is not
submission to His ways to be tempting God, and not trusting Him.
'All the temptation' was ended. So these three made
a complete whole, and the quiver of the enemy was for
the time empty. He departed 'for a season,' or rather,
until an opportunity. He was foiled when he tried
to tempt by addressing desires. His next assault will
be at Gethsemane and Calvary, when dread and the
shrinking from pain and death will be assailed as
vainly.
PREACHING AT NAZARETH
'And He began to say unto them, This day is this
scripture fulfilled In your ears.'--LUKE iv. 21.
This first appearance of our Lord, in His public work at Nazareth,
the home of His childhood, was preceded, as we learn from John's
Gospel, by a somewhat extended ministry in Jerusalem. In the course
of it, He cast the money-changers out of the Temple, did many
miracles, had His conversation with Nicodemus, and on His return
towards Galilee met the woman of Samaria at the well. The report of
these things, no doubt, had preceded Him, and kindled the Nazarenes'
curiosity to see their old companion who had suddenly shot up into a
person of importance, and had even made a sensation in the
metropolis. A great man's neighbours are keen critics of, and slow
believers in, his greatness. So it was natural and very prudent that
Jesus should not begin His ministry in Nazareth.
We can easily imagine the scene that morning in the little village,
nestling among the hills. How many memories would occupy Christ as
He entered the synagogue, where He had so often sat a silent
worshipper! How Mary's eyes would fill with tears if she was there,
and how the companions of His boyhood, who used to play with Him,
would watch Him; all curious, some sympathetic, some jealous, some
contemptuous!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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