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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 066. A New Experience for the Tempter
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A New Experience for the Tempter
This was something new to the tempter, strangely new. It was perplexing and nonplussing. He had had no such experience all through his long career of tempting. Only once had he met a couple who had no sin inheritance to trouble them. And by a bit of cunning they had been deceived and were quickly ensnared. That was long, long before. This man with His steady purpose to please the Father, this Jesus was utterly disconcerting. The tempter could do nothing against such a man.
This sinlessness, both in will and in act, in purpose and in life, was the basis of our Lord's victory. It was the basis of Satan's defeat. He feared such a Man. He could not touch Him. He could not resist Him. It was this that gave and gives such value to Jesus' death on our behalf. It was a sinless life that was poured out to the very death on Calvary. This very fact made His death wholly on account of others. Of Himself Jesus would never have died. For death is the logical outcome of sin. Where there is no sin, either by entail or act, there is no death. The purity and obedience, the perfection and sinlessness of the Man who died, gave the great value to that death. Of very necessity it was for others. Here is the groundwork of the stinging defeat administered to the tempter by our Lord.
It was the sinlessness of this Man who gave up His life that made His death such a satisfying forever of the righteousness of God. It was the utter lack of all claim upon Jesus by Satan, that made His death settle forever so utterly all of Satan's claim against us sinners. Herein was shown the wondrous love that melts the stubbornness of the human heart into penitent softness. Jesus need not have suffered and died as He did unless He chose to. But He made that choice for our sakes. It was His love that led Him to that choice. This deliberate, determined keeping of sin out was the basis of the tempter's defeat.
Sin is Satan's doorway into a human life. Wherever there is sin there is a wide open door to him. Where there is no sin, as with our Lord, there is no opportunity of getting in. Sin is Satan's only doorway in. Sin is Satan's stronghold. It gives him footing for his fighting. It gives him atmosphere. No sin means no chance for Satan to work. Absence of sin cuts the very ground out from under his feet. I am talking about our Lord's sinlessness just now. But we shall see a little later the practical power of this tremendous fact in our own lives. In thus refusing to let sin in Jesus was utterly neutralizing Satan's power.