Satan’s ends in tempting Christ to fall down and worship him.—Of blasphemous injections.—What blasphemy is.—The ways of Satan in that temptation, with the advantages he takes therein, and the reason of urging blasphemies upon men.—Consolations to such as are concerned in such temptations.—Advice to such as are so afflicted.
These observations, which the preparation to the temptation hath afforded us, being despatched, the temptation itself follows, which is this, ‘fall down and worship me.’
This motion, from such a one as Satan, to such a one as Christ, who was holy and undefiled, God and man, seems to be an incredible piece of arrogancy, pride, and malice; for to propound himself as the object of divine worship, was certainly a desperate assault. It includes, [1.] the highest blasphemy; [2.] the grossest idolatry imaginable. Both these are frequently noted as the design of this temptation.[450] But [3.] the comprehension of this motion takes in the whole withdrawing of the mind from God and religion, or the care of the soul and eternal life; in which sense Satan doth frequently practise this temptation upon men by the motive of worldly pleasures. I shall consider the temptation first, as blasphemous, and so it will give us this observation:—
Obs. 6. That the best of God’s children may be troubled with most vile and hideous blasphemous injections.
Blasphemy, in the largest sense, is anything spoken or done, by which the honour and fame of God may be wounded or prejudiced; but the formality of blasphemy lies in the purpose or intendment of reproaching God. Such was the blasphemy of the Israelitish woman’s son, recorded in Lev. xxiv. 11, where blaspheming is explained by the addition of the word cursing, which in the original— קלל—comes from a word that signifies to ‘set light by one.’[451] So that hence, and from the circumstances of the story, we may safely conjecture that this man having an Egyptian to his father, which probably might in scorn be objected to him by his contending adversary, he more readily might be drawn out to vilify the true God; but, be it what it will, it was certainly more than that blasphemy which the Rabbins fancy to be in the repetition of naming the word Jehovah, which in reverence they either leave out, as when they say, ‘the arm of the Almighty,’ or change it into some other, as Adonai, or the like; and accordingly we may observe, that reproaching God and blaspheming God are joined together, as Ps. xliv. 16; Isa. xxxvii. 23.
In blasphemy, as the matter, there must be thoughts, words, or actions that may aptly express a contempt or reproach of God; so also, as to the form of it, there must be an intendment of reproaching. Now though this be a sin which the heart of a servant of God would most abhor, yet Satan doth sometimes trouble the best with it. We have an instance in Job. His design was to bring him to curse God, for so he professeth in express terms; chap. i. 11, ii. 5, ‘Lay thine hand upon him, and he will curse thee to thy face.’ And in prosecution of this his boast, he breaks the matter plainly to him by his wife, chap. ii. 9, ‘Curse God and die.’ Whatever may be spoken of the word as signifying blessing, though some affirm the word ברך, in the proper idiom of that language, and not by an antiphrasis or euphemismus, as some think,[452] signifies as properly to ‘curse’ as to ‘bless,’ and is determinable to its signification either way by the circumstances of the place, or whatever men endeavour to excuse his wife, it is plain, not only by Job’s answer, that it was evil counsel, but also by Satan’s avowed design, that it was directly for cursing God. Besides this instance, if we consider the expression of ‘fiery darts,’ Eph. vi. 16, we shall find that this temptation is more common to all sorts of Christians than we would imagine. It is plain that these words allude to the poisoned arrows which Scythians and others used. These not only wounded but poisoned, and the venom inflamed with a fiery heat the part or member pierced. By this similitude, it must be granted that not common temptations are hereby understood, but such as were more than ordinarily hurtful, vexing, and dangerous. It may be persecutions are one of these darts, but all reckon temptations of spiritual terrors, and blasphemy, to be undoubtedly pointed at.[453]
The ways of Satan in this temptation are three:—
(1.) First, He endeavours to bring men to blaspheme, by secret and subtle ways of ensnaring them; and this is most-what practised in consequential and covert blasphemies, when, though men do not directly intend an open outrage against God, yet Satan brings them to that which might be so interpreted. This seems to have been the case of Job’s sons, according to his jealousy of them; ‘It may be my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their heart,’ Job i. 5; not that they were open blasphemers, for they were surely better educated, neither doth Job express such a fear of them; but that in their mirth their hearts might have been so loosened from the fear of God, that they might be tempted to undue thoughts of God, slighting his threatenings or goodness. To this purpose Broughton translates, ‘They have little blessed God in their hearts.’[454] The same thing we may observe in Job himself. When the devil could not prevail with him to ‘charge God foolishly,’ chap. i. 22, yet he pressed him so hard by his miseries, that he hoped at last to bring him to utter the anguish of his mind in impatient and reflecting expressions, and so far prevailed, that he bitterly ‘Curseth the day wherein he was born,’ chap. ii. 3, and wisheth that he had ‘given up the ghost when he came out of the belly;’ which though it came far short of what Satan had boasted of in his achievement against him, yet it had such an unwarrantable tendency that way, that when his friend Eliphaz took notice of his expressions, as savouring of too much distrust, he is forced to make apology for himself, and to excuse it by the desperateness of his condition; chap. vi. 26, ‘Do you imagine to reprove words and the speeches of one that is desperate?’ In such cases, the devil provokes men beyond their intentions, to speak in their haste so inconsiderately, that they know not or mind not, the just consequence of their speeches. It was a degree of blasphemy in David to say, though in his haste, that ‘all men were liars;’ it was an unbelieving reflection on the promise given him by Samuel. In Mal. iii. 13, the people did not believe that they had ‘spoken so much against God,’ when yet their words had been ‘stout against him.’
(2.) Secondly, Satan endeavours this by violent injections of blasphemous thoughts that are directly such. In this I shall note to you,
[1.] First, That the vilest thoughts of God, of his ways and providences, of Scripture, and of Christ, are frequently suggested. Things of greatest outrage against heaven, and contempt of the Almighty, as Bernard expresseth it, Terribilia de fide, horribilia de divinitate; as, there is no God, or that he is not just, or not faithful to his promises; or that Christ was but an impostor. He sticks at nothing in this kind, though never so contrary to the hope and persuasion of those whom he thus molests.