Seven beautiful things manifesting the grace and power and glory of our blessed Lord are seen in Matthew 3 and 4.

1. The voice of the Father points Him out as the Object of Heaven's delight.
2. The descending Spirit abides upon Him as the Son of God, whom "God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto."
3. Angels delight to minister unto Him, as once before they had heralded His birth.
4. Satan flees defeated from the presence of a Man in the wilderness. Four thousand years before he had triumphed, with the same temptations, over a man in a garden.
5. The Lord becomes the light to them that sit in darkness—Galilee of the Gentiles—the part of the outskirts of the nation which was most despised by the religious leaders. There, the Lord, rejected at Jerusalem, goes in grace and gathers to Himself a people who owned His claims and obeyed His Word.
6. He begins His wonderful mission, and its divine character is marked at the very outset by His victory over disease, death, and the devil. It is the powers of the world to come in the hands of the King. Lunacy destroyed the mind; palsy destroyed the body; demon-possession destroyed both; but Jesus healed them all.
7. Then He is seen attracting to Himself the hearts of men. Nets, boats, relations, and calling—all are left to follow the Lord Jesus. The most powerful attraction set before the soul is not "I ought," or "I must"; but the fact that One has gone through this world before us: attracted our hearts out of it to Himself, where He now is on the throne: given us His place before the Father (John 17:14), and now He expects us to fill His place before the world.

We are not of the world. Let us show it more and more in Christ-likeness day by day.

—From Messiah the Prince