Thought for Thursday
And the devil, taking Him up into an high mountain, shewed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. Luke 4:5
Let’s pretend we are drawing a line that is a meter long. That line represents your entire life. On that line, mark off the segment that would represent the time you spent eating breakfast this morning. That would be a very short segment! You might not even be able to see it. Let’s draw another line that is a meter long, and let that line represent the history of the world. On that line, mark off a small segment that represents your life. Again, you will have a tiny segment, possibly too small to discern. Does that give you a bit of an idea how short our lives are? OK, one final line, except this time, instead of a meter, let’s make it a kilometer long. We’ll let that long line represent eternity. On that line, mark off a segment that represents time. This time, the segment will be far too minuscule to see. In fact, if we were to stretch the eternity line to a million kilometers, the time segment would remain invisible. So when the devil offered all the kingdoms of the world to the Lord Jesus, in a moment of time, he was offering a bad bargain.
Our God is an eternal God who dwells in eternity (Isaiah 57:15). But the devil is not an eternal being, and he has no authority in eternity. Revelation 12:12 reminds us that the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. And in relation to eternity, the devil’s domain as prince of the power of the air is very short. His offer to the Lord Jesus of the kingdoms of the world was for a moment of time. If you or I had been in His place, the devil’s offer would have been overwhelmingly tempting. But not to the Lord Jesus, to the eternal Son of the Eternal God, who could fully understand the brevity of the devil’s offer. He could fully grasp how bad the devil’s bargain was. Sadly, so many of us fail to grasp how bad the bargain is when the devil offers far less than the kingdoms of the world, for a moment of time.
Make no mistake, the devil is still in the business of making bad bargains, as he did with our first parents in Eden. He has been tempting us all of our lives, offering a bit of pleasure here, a bit of popularity there, a bit of prosperity somewhere else, and a bit of power on occasion. For these things, we have steeped our souls in sin and failed to submit to the claims of the God of eternity. Even today, the devil teases us with a bit more sleep in exchange for giving up our time in the Word of God. He offers a phone call with an old friend in exchange for our time of prayer and meditation. And on it goes. If only we could see what a bad bargain it is when we take the devil’s offers!
Moses rejected Egypt’s pleasures of sin because they were only for a season. We should reject them too because they are only for a moment of time. -Jim MacIntosh