Arizona sun., 1949-01-28

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D- Eorooor that man. But he
had his tempta-
tions all the same. After the great
day Of his baptism, when the
heavens opened and he felt the
Holy Spirit as plainly as a bird
from the sky alighting on his shoul-
der, we are told that he was ''full
of the Holy Spirit" Surely no temp
tation could reach him nowl Yet
the Spirit led him to the wilderness
where Satan waited for him.
The Devil Is Smart
CATAN is a persistent devil. He
~ never takes No for an answer,
he will be back again with the
same temptation in another pack
age. It was so with Jesus. We must
not think that Jesus was tempted
to low and ugly sins. People are
tempted on the level where they
live.
After the Baptism, if rot be-
fore, he was fully awake to the
fact that he was Gods beloved
Son, that it was his reSpOn-
ability to begin the Kingdom
OF GOd;" he knew he had .
position and a power that no
one else on earth had ever had.
The problem was: How should
he use this position and this
power?
Each of the three temptations in
the wilderness had something to
do with that problem. Two of the
temptations, at least, were not to
do anything wrong in itself. Each
time Jesus was tempted to choose
something less than the best. And
choosing less than the best, when
the best can be had, is sin.
All Temptation Sounds Good
OTURN stones into Bread" the
l. tempter said. And why not?
People were hungry all around !:
Jesus grew up in a land where
most people were lucky to get one
square meal a day, let alone three.
Jesus would be the Divine Leader
of the Kingdom, the Founder OF
the New Age. Why not make it the
Age of Plenty? Why not abolish
hunger from the earth? 1t could
be done; it sounds good.
So does that other tempta-
ton - ''ThrOw yourself down,
the angels will see that you are
not hurt" Perhaps many wOr-
shippers at the Temple expect
ed that the Messiah, Gods
King to be, would fly down out
of cloud.
Then that temptation which
seems at first reading so ridicu-
lous-fall down and worship Satan.
It was not so ridiculous as it ap-
pears. What did Jesus want but to
be King of Kings and Lord OF
Lords? What difference does il
make how we attain our ambitions,
if we only reach them? All other
world conquerorS had achieved
tn r pinnacles of power by "wor-
shipping Satan" that is by using
violence and trickery.
But Jesus, being full Of the
Holy Spirit, knew that not
everything that sounds good, is
good.
He saw clearly that not even he
could bring in the Kingdom of God
simply by feeding people, cE as
tonishing them with aerial stunts,
and still less by using those ancient
methods of the world-conquerors,
the tools of Satan, violence and lies.
Defense Weapon
JESUS met his great enemy and
- beat him down with a single
weapon. Every time, Jesus comes
out with quotation from the Bible,
incidentally always from Deuter-
onomy, evidently a favorite book
with him. We have the same wea-
pom at our disposal today, and more
besides.
There is nothing magical in .
Scripture quotation. The point
is not that Jesus had memOr-
lied these verses so that he
could quote them; anybody
could do that even without be-
ieving a word of them.
What Jesus did was to make
those truths his own, they were part
of his mind, actually his own con-
victions. Do you really want to rise
proof against temptations? Do as
Jesus did: make Gods ideas your
own. The sharpest lie will blunt
itself against the keen edge of
Truth
(Copyright by the International Council
of Religious Education on behalf of 20
Protestant denominations. Released BY
WNU FeatureS.)