We are looking at the events which occurred just after Jesus was baptised by john the Baptist and just before Jesus began His public ministry. The period of 40 days when Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 1500 years earlier the newborn nation of Israel had spent 40 years between their escape from slavery in Egypt and entering the promised land wandering in the wilderness discovering what it meant to be the people of God. In the same way Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights exploring what it meant to be God the Son, born as a human being.
We began last week with the first temptation.
3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Last week we saw that Jesus had to learn from experience that being the Son of God did not mean that he would always be comfortable and have all his needs met. Even being the Son of God Jesus would face hunger and thirst and all kinds of other experiences of suffering. Although he had the power to perform miracles, even so easily turning stones to bread, Jesus the Son of God had to learn to depend on God and God alone.
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Being Son of God would not exempt Jesus from the kinds of discomfort and suffering which ordinary human beings have to face. And as God’s children, Christians are not exempt from those kinds of experiences either. That was the first temptation. And in some ways the second was similar.
Matthew 45 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
After the temptation always to be comfortable, the temptation to assume that He will always be safe. The devil is quoting Psalm 91 which we just read and interestingly was the reading we had a few weeks ago when we were considering the ministry of angels.
Here is a Psalm about every believer, everyone who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, everyone who trusts in God as his fortress and refuge. It promises protection and safety from pestilence and plague, from death in battle, from wild animals. It promises rescue and protection for all who put their trust in God, no harm or disaster will befall you.
In particular this Psalm was believed to be true of God’s chosen King of Israel. But if those promises hold true for every believer, and especially for the King, how much more should they be true for the Son of God, the Messiah, the chosen one!
But there in the wilderness Jesus had to learn that even being the Son of God doesn’t guarantee an easy life or a safe life! Some preachers use this Psalm 91 to teach that if we are Christians we will always be safe. God will always protect us. We will never suffer accident or injury or failure or discouragement. This “health wealth and prosperity gospel” is a lie from the devil. God does not promise any such protection.
The truth is that God does not guarantee his chosen people unlimited protection from any harm. Psalm 91 is no guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to us as Christians. The health wealth and prosperity merchants have got things badly wrong! To expect an easy safe life is misguided and to start to doubt God when the going gets tough is to put God to the test. That is what Jesus was learning in the wilderness and it is a lesson we all need to learn!
To be clear, the temptation Jesus was facing here was NOT to do with how he would exercise His ministry as Son of God. It was NOT the temptation to use a spectacular miracle to draw attention to Himself and prove that He was indeed the Son of God. The temptation was instead concerned with what it means to be the Son of God – or indeed a child of God.
The devil is testing Jesus by misquoting Scripture. The same trick as he used on Eve in the Garden of Eden. “Didn’t God say this?” The same trick the devil uses in so many settings today, misquoting and distorting Scripture so God’s children get confused.
Listen again to these promises of safety in Psalm 91 for those who put their trust in God.
2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.
7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
9 If you make the Most High your dwelling— even the LORD, who is my refuge—
10 then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;
So the devil whispers to Jesus and to us, “Didn’t God say he would always keep you safe!”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
This time Jesus’s answer came from Deuteronomy 6.
DUT 6:13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah.
Massah was the name given to the place where God brought water out of the rock for the people of Israel to drink. The people were complaining of thirst and got angry with Moses and with God.
EXODUS 17:5 The LORD answered Moses, “Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarrelled and because they tested the LORD saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
By asking, “Is the Lord among us or not,” the people of Israel had put God to the test in the wilderness. They were demanding that God prove his love and protection for them by providing food and water in miraculous ways. This was the temptation Jesus was facing – the temptation ask God His Father to prove his love and protection. To do something which would make God show his presence. To prove he was there.
12 Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
The word “put God to the test” is essentially the same word as we read in verse 2 – Jesus was put to the test by the devil. For Jesus to put himself in danger just so that God would show himself in power would be to put God to the test.
Here is a temptation we can all fall into. There are so many ways we can put God to the test- getting God to prove He exists or that he loves us. “Do this or I won’t believe in you” we pray. We make bargains with God. All to test whether God is really with us or not, like the Israelites did. Instead we need to simply trust. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Don’t expect God to prove that he exists – because He won’t!
This was the temptation to walk not by faith but by sight. Demanding that God the Father prove that He was with Jesus all the time, protecting Him and keeping Him safe from all harm. There is a delicate deviding line between a prayer of faith relying on God’s promises to act miraculously and on the other hand putting God to the test, to prove that He exists! Our relationship with God must rest on faith, not on sight, not on proof!
It is so easy for Christians to fall into this temptation. We get sick, or somebody we love gets sick. We pray that God will bring healing but the person isn’t healed. We don’t just want the miracle because we care that the person gets better – we want the miracle to prove to us that God actually exists, and that he really loves us.
So when things go wrong in our lives, Christians can slip into doubt. We are the victims of injustice or crime. We face unemployment, or accident. We are grieving for a loved one, lost and alone. Instead of trusting in God’s presence and receiving His peace, Christians call our for proof that God is there and that he truly cares for us. That is putting God to the test.
Many people who are not believers make the same mistake when they look around and see the existence of evil and suffering in the world. The problem of suffering can be expressed like this.
If God is all powerful he could end all suffering.
If God is all loving then he would end all suffering.
Suffering exists in the world so therefore either God is not all powerful or else God is not all loving.
Some take the argument further to say the all-loving all-powerful Christian God would surely stop suffering. But suffering exists therefore the all-loving all-powerful Christian God cannot exist.
This takes to the extreme the attitude of the Israelites at Massah and Meribah. The question ceases to be “Is God among us or not” and becomes “Does God actually exist at all?”
In essence it is saying this. “If God doesn’t make the world work out the way I want it to, I will refuse to believe he exists.” The name given to this attitude is “protest atheism.” If people, either me or those I love or even strangers, if people are suffering then as a protest against God allowing that suffering I will refuse to believe in Him.”
Many people hold this view at one level or another. They see suffering in the world, and often particularly in those they love, and so they reject the idea of an all-loving all-powerful God. Somebody close to them becomes ill and dies, or maybe is disabled or dies in an accident, and in their grief they just can’t understand how God would allow such a thing to happen. They are the victims of crime, or maybe they just see the atrocities of terrorists halfway across the world, and that says to them that God can’t exist.
“Protest atheism” is philosophically flawed. If God did not exist there would be no reason at all for the world to have any good in it or any purpose behind it. Seeing examples of suffering in the world only proves that evil exists – it could never prove that God does not exist. “Protest atheism” is the ultimate extreme of putting God to the test, asking “Is God among us or not?” Such an attitude is really demanding that God remove all the suffering and all the evil in the world, to prove that he exists. But demanding that kind of proof from God is exactly the sin the Israelites fell into and the temptation which Jesus rejected.
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
We can face that temptation to think that God will give his children lives immune from any harm or suffering. And we can fall into the trap of asking God to give us miracles to give us proof that he exists and that he loves us. Jesus’s response to the temptation was simple.
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
I wonder whether that temptation came back to Jesus’s mind when he was in the garden of Gethsemane and Judas had just betrayed him with a kiss.
Matthew 26:50 Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”
How easy it would have been for Jesus to summon those legions of angels and escape the suffering of the cross! But he resisted that temptation.
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
