I take the pinnacles on the top of the temple to be types of those
lofty, airy notions, with which some delight themselves, while they
hover like birds above the solid and godly truths of Christ. Satan
attempted to entertain Christ Jesus with this type and antitype at
once, when he set him on one of the pinnacles of the temple, and
offered to thrust him upon a false confidence in God, by a false and
unsound interpretation of a text. Matt. 4:5,6; Luke 4:9-11.
You have some men who cannot be content to worship in the temple,
but must be aloft; no place will serve them but pinnacles--pinnacles,
that they may be speaking in and to the air, that they may be promoting
their heady notions, instead of solid truth--not considering that now
they are where the devil would have them be. They strut upon their
points, their pinnacles; but let them look to it: there is difficult
standing upon pinnacles; their neck, their soul, is in danger. We read,
God is in his temple, not upon these pinnacles. Psalm 4; Hab. 2:20.
It is true, Christ was once upon one of these; but the devil set him
there, with intent to dash him in pieces by a fall; and yet even
then told him, if he would venture to tumble down, he should be kept
from dashing his foot against a stone. To be there, therefore, was
one of Christ's temptations; consequently one of Satan's stratagems:
nor went he thither of his own accord, for he knew that there was
danger; he loved not to clamber pinnacles.
This should teach Christians to be low and little in their own eyes,
and to forbear to intrude into airy and vain speculations, and to
take heed of being puffed up with a foul and empty mind.