Matthew 4:1-11 - Testing God

I want to start out up front by saying that this particular temptation has been difficult for me to grasp. We know from v.1 that Jesus was truly tempted by these things. It was hard for me to envision how jumping off the temple would have been a true temptation. I wondered, what was the essence of this temptation? What was Jesus being asked to do? The answer may have jumped off the page at you, but I have really had to wrestle with the text, praying and meditating, exploring possibilities, and basically just going over and over it.

I'm thankful for difficult texts for several reasons. First, they remind me that I am only a man studying the words of an unfathomable God. For me to expect to easily understand all that He has said is foolish. Second, they sharpen my awareness of my need of the Holy Spirit's guidance whenever I study. Third, its just fun to dig and dig, and become buried in the words of His book. And fourth, this particular text will provide a great opportunity to explore how we should handle a passage that is difficult to interpret.

The main thing we want to keep in mind is that an obscure or difficult text does not provide a warrant for wild speculation. We're not interested in what it could mean - we want to know what it does mean. We have to let Scripture interpret Scripture. We need to be able to literally put our finger somewhere on the page of Scripture and say, "This is what leads me to my interpretation." If there are no textual markers that lead us to our interpretation, then we have taken gross liberty with the Word.

First, let's remember Jesus' physical condition. V.2 tells us that Jesus has been fasting for 40 days. He is hungry and exhausted and we know from v.3-4 that He has just repelled a temptation to make bread and thereby alleviate His own suffering. So He is still in a very fragile state.

Second, what is it that Satan is specifically asking Jesus to do? He wants Jesus to jump and he justifies this by quoting Scripture, reassuring Jesus that God will send angels to catch Him. If we just read the text for what it is, I really don't think we can say that Satan is trying to trick Jesus into killing Himself. Jesus is far smarter than that and Satan is too smart to think that it would work. Plus, Jesus' response also indicates that this is not a temptation to commit suicide - if it was, the Scripture He quoted would have been ill-suited for the situation. Further, Jesus is well aware of His authority to call for the assistance of angels (26:53), so there shouldn't be any fear in Jesus' mind that He would be in danger if He were to jump.

And that, I believe, is what makes this temptation so tempting. It is a huge stretch to believe that Jesus would ever be tempted to kill himself. But if this is not a temptation to jump to destruction, but rather to jump to safety (which is what Satan has explicitly asked Him to do), and to reassure Himself that God is there, then things start to make a little more sense.

Things will become clearer if we look at Jesus' response closely. After the devil has quoted Scripture, Jesus replies, "Again it has been written, 'You shall not test the Lord your God.'" He is quoting Deut 6:16, "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah."

What happened at Massah? If you have time, look at Exodus 17. There we find Israel grumbling to Moses about their thirst. Again, they are wishing they had never left Egypt, and God then reveals to Moses how He will provide water for them. The last verse of the account, 17:7 reads, "He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, "Is the LORD among us, or not?"

"Is the Lord among us or not?" The testing of the Lord, that is, the asking of that question - "Is the Lord among us or not?" - is at the heart of Israel's failure in the wilderness. They have seen extraordinary things from Yahweh. The ten plagues. The parting of the Red Sea. The manna. Time after time, God has worked on their behalf and yet they demand water as a sign that the Lord is among them. The Psalmist revisits this in 95:8-9: "Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work." This failure, like the preceding failure when they grumbled for food, is essentially a failure to trust God. Their problem is a lack of faith. And in their demand for water, they are demanding that God prove Himself faithful.

Now, we know that Jesus is desiring to fulfill all righteousness, to obey where the Israelites disobeyed, to succeed were they failed. And in this case, we know from His use of Scripture and from the OT context of that Scripture, that He intends to trust the Father where Israel tested the Father. He assumes a position of subjection to God, rather than forcing God to act.

Like the first temptation, here Satan is tempting Jesus to use His prerogative as the Son of God to prematurely end His testing. To jump to safety would be to end the suffering. The desire to be rid of the wilderness testing parallels the Israelites' desire to be rid of their thirst. They failed by testing God's faithfulness in an attempt to end their suffering. Jesus succeeds by not testing God, but by trusting Him and His purpose in and through the suffering.

It is important for us to assume the same posture that Jesus did. God is God and we are His children. We must understand that it is God who tests us - we do not test Him. He leads us into temptation and testing, we do not lead Him. He holds us accountable, we do not hold Him accountable. He tests our faith, we do not test His faithfulness.

This whole thing reminds me of the name-it-and-claim-it phenomenon. You know, there are times, when the Lord wants me to be sick. There are times when the Lord wants me to suffer physically. There are times when He wants me to hurt and mourn. There are times when He wants me to be penniless and hungry. He has purpose in all those things, building my faith, teaching me to trust, and making me more like Him. How disrespectful it is for me to claim that He doesn't want me to experience that testing and to "claim" deliverance from it, to behave as if God is obligated to serve me, to make my will God's will.

"Is the Lord among us or not?" Israel assumed that because of their thirst, God was not among them. We make the same mistake. We assume that suffering means that God is not with us and we cry out for Him to deliver us from it and show Himself faithful. But to test God is to doubt Him. To doubt Him is to not trust Him. To not trust Him is sin.

But God is with us in the suffering. May we trust Him in it and submit to His purpose in it as Jesus did.