I. Christ does not enter into a long discussion with the devil, but at once silences him, knowing his obduracy. (Tit. iii. 10.) He teaches us thereby not to parley with diabolic suggestions, but at once to suppress them.
II. Christ answered in the words of Scripture, to show us how to meet the assaults of the evil one; not with weapons of our own devising, but with those taken from the armoury of God’s Word.
III. Christ met and overcame Satan with his own weapon. Thus did David slay Goliath with his own sword; thus was Haman hanged on his own gallows; thus did Christ triumph at the last over Satan by a tree, wherewith Satan had ruined man.
IV. We tempt the Lord our God, whenever—
1. Presumptuously we require Him to alter the course of nature on our behalf.
2. We rush needlessly into danger.
3. We thoughtlessly cast ourselves into prayer, without having prepared our minds as to what we shall ask. (Eccles. xviii. 23.)
4. We persevere in sin that grace may abound, postponing repentance, stopping our ears to the calls of God.
5. We tie God down to means, as the princes of Bethulia tempted God, when they said that they would give up the city in five days. (Judith viii. 11.)
6. We attempt to excogitate the meaning of Scripture, with regard to doctrine, for ourselves, without following the direction of our divinely-constituted and infallible guide, the Church.