Don’t Test God

Matthew 4:5-7

“You shall not tempt the Lord thy God.”

Satans first attack was through The lust of the flesh. Now his second attempt is through the Pride of life. “If you are the Son of God, then cast thyself down, for it is written he shall give his angels charge over you lest you dash your foot against a stone.” What Satan is saying is if you are who you think you are then let’s just see if God your Father will protect you like he said he would. The evil of this temptation was for Jesus to climb to the pinnacle of the Temple and cast himself down to put God to the test and put his power on display. It really means to provoke God. It was a complete misinterpretation of Psalms 91:11,12.

The Devil comes to you and I and says “If God really loved you he wouldn’t allow you to get sick, because it is written ‘With his stripes you are healed.’” (Isaiah 53:6) Or “God said that you will not be poor because It is written, ‘He (Jesus) become poor so that we could become rich.’” (2 Corinthians 8:9) The whole motive of Satan is to get us to use the Bible as a means of putting God and his word to the test instead of it being God’s revelation to man, revealing the covenant promises concerning the redemption and salvation of man in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. There are promises of healing, prosperity, and blessings in the Bible, but those only come as a result of our understanding the Bible’s true purpose, which is to lead us to Repentance and a Relationship with him.

We are never to put God on display by Putting ourselves into situations just to prove that he will rescue us out of them. For example, if Daniel would have said I am going to spend the night in the den of lions because God would never allow anything to happen to me, I believe Daniel would have made a great supper for the lions. But, if because of his faith and faithfulness, he is thrown into the den, then God would protect him, as he so faithfully did.

Also we are never to put God on display by Wanting to show off our spirituality in order to prove how spiritual or faithful we are. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would have went and jumped into the fire to show off their faith they would have burned. But because they did have faith and wanted to be faithful to God by not bowing to the statue, God would and did rescued them from the fiery furnace.

In other words we do not put God into a bind or make him binding unto us by being careless or reckless with his word. We are to hold his word sacred and allow it to test us instead of us testing it. Jesus overcame this temptation of pride by humbly submitting himself to the authority of God and honoring him by honoring the true meaning and purpose of the written word.

So let us seek to honor God and his word, holding it sacred, so that in times of testing he will honor it and keep his promise by making a way of escape for us. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Pastor Robby