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We get here a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Christ, and a most pathetic revelation of His thoughts and experiences; all the more precious because it is quite incidental, and, we may say, unconscious.

I. THE TEMPTED CHRIST. "In My temptations" — so He summed up His life! The period to which He refers lies between the wilderness and the garden, and includes neither. His whole ministry was a field of continual and diversified temptations. No sham fight.

1. Let us think of the tempted Christ, that our conceptions of His sinlessness may be increased. His was no untried and cloistered virtue, pure because never brought into contact with seducing evil, but a militant and victorious goodness, that was able to withstand in the evil day.

2. Let us think of the tempted Christ, that our thankful thoughts of what He bore for us may be warmer and more adequate, as we stand afar off and look on at the mystery of His battle with our enemies and His.

3. Let us think of the tempted Christ, to make the lighter burden of our cross and our less terrible conflict easier to bear and to wage. So will He continue with us in our temptations, and patience and victory flow to us from Him.

II. THE LONELY CHRIST. The most solitary man that ever lived. His nearest kindred stood aloof from Him. Even in the small company of His friends, there were absolutely none who either understood Him or sympathized with Him. Talk of the solitude of pure character amid evil, like Lot in Sodom, or of the loneliness of uncomprehended aims or unshared thoughts — whoever experienced that as keenly as Christ did? The more pure and lofty a nature, the more keen its sensitiveness, the more exquisite its delights, and the sharper its pains. The more loving and unselfish a heart the more its longing for companionship; and the more its aching in loneliness. That lonely Christ sympathizes with all solitary hearts. If ever we feel ourselves misunderstood and thrown back upon ourselves; if ever our heart's burden of love is rejected; if our outward lives be lonely and earth yields nothing to stay our longing for companionship; if our hearts have been filled with dear ones and are now empty, or but filled with tears, let us think of Him and say, "Yet I am not alone." He lived alone, alone He died, that no heart might ever be solitary any more.

III. THE GRATEFUL CHRIST. His heart was gladdened by loving friends, and He recognized in their society a ministry of love. Where there is a loving heart there is acceptable service. It is possible that our poor, imperfect deeds shall be an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children's gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money, and be of little use? They mean love, so they are precious. And Christ, in like manner, accepts what we bring, even though it be chilled by selfishness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed by self-will.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.

WEB: There arose also a contention among them, which of them was considered to be greatest.