11 Why Waiting on God Is Better Than Spectacular Acts (Matthew 4:5-7)

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 11th talk in our series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we're gonna study Matthew chapter 4, verses 5 through 7. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find those on wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 11. Thanks for joining me today. We're looking at the second temptation of Jesus today, and let's just review where we are in Matthew's gospel. As Matthew tells the story, we have just met Jesus. In the first two chapters we learn about his miraculous birth and how God protected him as an infant and a child, and then in chapter three, we meet John the Baptist, who functions as the herald who announces that the king is coming. And then finally we meet Jesus when, as his first official act, he submits himself to the baptism of John. At his baptism the heavens open and the Spirit of God descends on him in some visible dove like form, and he hears a voice from heaven that declares him to be the beloved Son of God. After these dazzling supernatural displays that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus is not immediately crowned and placed on the throne in Jerusalem, rather he's led into the wilderness where he goes without food for forty days and nights and is tempted by the devil. This tension lies behind all the temptations. On the one hand, Jesus has been powerfully confirmed as the Son of God, the Messiah, and on the other hand, God has put him in a place where he might starve to death and where he is facing great hardship and deprivation. He has been assured by God that he has a glorious destiny as the Messiah, and yet right now God is asking him to suffer. Jesus knows that God wants him to be in the wilderness going hungry right now. At the end of 40 days, Satan comes to tempt him. Satan wants to destroy Jesus personally, but more importantly, he wants to disqualify him to be the Messiah. Yet while Satan wants to destroy God's plan of salvation, God has a deeper purpose in these temptations. God is testing Jesus and wants to demonstrate that Jesus is in fact worthy and qualified to be the Messiah. Furthermore, God deliberately sets up the circumstances so that they echo the story of Israel's journey in the wilderness. Like Israel, Jesus is led by God into the wilderness. Like Israel, Jesus is left by God to go hungry. Like Israel, Jesus is led by God for a time period of forty, forty years for the nation of Israel, forty days for Jesus. Like Israel, Jesus is being tested in the wilderness. And like Israel, Jesus has received miraculous assurances from God. Israel was promised that God would lead them to the promised land, they witnessed the plagues in Egypt, including the Passover, they witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, and likewise at his baptism, Jesus witnessed the opening of heaven, the descending of the Spirit, and the voice of God confirming he is the Son. Like Israel, Jesus has to confront the tension between the great promises God has given him, the signs God has given him, and the present hardship he finds himself in. And Jesus shows us that he understands this parallel between his situation and the nation of Israel by quoting from a particular sermon of Moses. After forty years in the wilderness, when Israel was poised into the promised land, Moses gave them one final sermon summarizing the things they were supposed to have learned from their wilderness journey. And Jesus quotes from this sermon and only this sermon when he responds to Satan. I think that shows he understands that Israel faced the same kind of issue he's now facing. Now we could ask the question, why would God test Jesus in a way that so strongly reminds us of Israel's testing? And I think the primary reason is to teach us that Jesus is succeeding where the nation of Israel failed. To be the Messiah, he must not only choose to willingly die in our place on the cross, he must also keep and fulfill the covenant that Israel failed to keep. Israel was called to be a blessing to themselves and to the world by being faithful to the covenant, but they failed and blessed neither themselves nor the world. Now Jesus is called to be a blessing to himself and the world, and he will succeed. He is the true Israel. He will fulfill the hopes of Israel and bring blessings to all the nations who trust him. Now let me also remind you that for each temptation I am seeking to answer three questions Why is the choice wrong? Why is the choice attractive to Jesus? And then how does Jesus respond? We looked at the first temptation in the last podcast, and today we're going to look at the second. This is Matthew chapter four, verses five through seven. Then the devil took him to the holy city and sent him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Let's start with why this choice is wrong. To answer that we have to figure out exactly what Satan is trying to get Jesus to do. He has taken him to the pinnacle of the temple and said jump. And according to archaeologists, to have jumped from this spot would be about a thousand foot fall. Now I don't know about you, but that isn't a very appealing option to me. I it's hard to understand at first glance why Jesus would be standing at this very high spot and be tempted to jump at all. It's a long way down. What what's the attraction? To help us answer that question, I want to explore a further question, which is what is Satan trying to accomplish? And first we're going to look at what he's not trying to accomplish. Satan is not creating a public spectacle as a demonstration of God's power that would perhaps advance Jesus' cause or thwart it if God doesn't come through. The holy city here is Jerusalem. We're not told how Satan took him there. The method could have been mundane or it could have been miraculous. We're not told, so I assume it's not important. And the pinnacle of the temple is not the peak of a spire on top of a temple like we might imagine the tip of the steeple on a modern church. In Jerusalem, the pinnacle of the temple was on the corner where the outside wall of the temple grounds met the outside wall of the city. We're talking about one of the corners on the Temple Mount. And the Temple Mount is a big raised platform, and there are several corners that jut out over the land below. There's no real reason why anyone would have noticed this event. In fact, I suspect the corner in question is the one that was not on the city side but looked down on a ravine below the city. At the time it would have been a very long drop outside the city wall, and probably not many people were around. There's no mention of a crowd in the text, and I think from the context, we can assume that Jesus and Satan are alone. This is a private affair. For Jesus to jump from this point would be to jump outside the city wall. And down below this point was the valley of Kidrum, which was full of olive orchards at the time. There might have been a few travelers in the valley or a few people working in the orchards, but there was no big group of people there to observe this spectacle. And even if anybody was down below, they're a thousand feet below. They probably wouldn't even notice these two people up on the pinnacle. Another possibility is that Satan is challenging the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. Like the last temptation, this account begins if you're the Son of God. If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down. And I argued that Son of God was a term for Messiah. And Satan could be saying, If you're really the Messiah, if you're really the Son of God, I doubt it, or don't think you are, prove it by throwing yourself down, because of course God would save his Messiah. And that is an interpretive possibility, but as with the first temptation, I don't think that's the real issue. For one, I don't see why Jesus would be tempted to play that game. Why should he care whether or not Satan believes he's the Messiah? Instead, I think Satan is trying to persuade Jesus by using persuasive language. If I were going to give a patriotic speech, I might say, if you're an American citizen, you should be willing to join this cause. I'm not saying, oh, I really don't think you're a citizen. I'm not challenging your citizenship. I believe that you're a citizen, and in fact, I'm counting on it. I'm basing my appeal to you on that fact. I'm trying to motivate you to action, and I want you to think, gosh, I am an American citizen, I should join that cause. I think that's the nature of Satan's statement if you're the Son of God. He's not challenging the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, he's trying to persuade him or move him to a point of action based on it. So what is he trying to persuade Jesus to do? I think he's asking Jesus to jump in order to please God. Satan is asking Jesus to please God by jumping as a demonstration of how faithful he is. Now we saw with the first temptation that given his present circumstances of being without food, Jesus was tempted to think that God was no longer taking care of him. But there's another possibility. Jesus would also be vulnerable to the suggestion that he had lost God's favor somehow. He is vulnerable to the idea, look, God's angry with you. You did something wrong and now God's not pleased with you, and that's why he's left you out here in the wilderness. He's mad at you. You're being punished, and you need to do something to earn God's favor back. Satan is saying, look, if you're the Son of God, you better do something quick to regain God's favor because look, it's obvious you've lost it. I mean, why else would he not feed you? Now we know that God delights in faith, so I suggest you throw yourself down in a spectacular leap of faith, literally, in order to show God how trusting you are, and then God will be pleased with you again. And Satan supports his point by quoting Psalm ninety one. The Psalm is about how God will protect the one who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, the one who trusts in the Lord as his refuge and his fortress, and the Psalmist asserts that God will protect those who trust him. So Psalm ninety one one and two beginning He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. And then the Psalmist goes on and gives various figurative pictures of how God protects those who trust him. He'll deliver you from the snare of the trapper, he'll deliver you from pestilence, you will trample on the lion and the adder, and so forth. And as part of the list, he says in Psalm ninety one nine through twelve, Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, the most high who is my refuge, no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways, on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. This is one of the metaphorical kinds of protection that God gives to the person who trusts him. This is not a promise that you will never so much as stub your toe. This is a poem. It's a metaphorical picture of God's protection. So what's Satan doing with the psalm? It's always interesting to look at how the New Testament authors handle the Old Testament. With the apostles and the New Testament authors, we assume a level of inspired sophistication, but that's not true with Satan. Though I suspect he probably had a sophisticated understanding of Scripture, I also think he was inclined to twist it to his own ends. Now perhaps he is just wildly pulling this verse out of context and hoping Jesus won't notice. We see that kind of proof texting in Scripture all the time today. The passage contains a word I want to expound on, or it contains a picture I want to use for my own purposes. So I ignore the author's original intent entirely and I preach on an entire message saying what I want to say, which is not even close to what the author meant to say. And Satan could be doing something like that. He could be saying, look, it says you won't strike your foot against a stone, so that means you won't literally strike your foot against a stone. You can jump, it's perfectly safe. If that's what he's doing, I think that would be fairly obvious even to the most beginner Bible student that he's not using the text very well. This is poetry. We expect metaphor and simile and word pictures in poetry. We don't expect precise literal interpretations. Rather, we expect a metaphorical picture of how God takes care of those who rely on him. His angels bearing you up so you won't strike your foot on a stone is one of those metaphorical pictures. I would guess that Satan is being a bit more sophisticated, that he's really serious about trying to trap and entice Jesus into sin, and he knows he's gonna have to be more crafty than something obvious. So I suspect he's saying something like this. Look, Jesus, the Psalm describes how God protects those who trust him. Now if you're the Son of God, then you of all people can be confident that God is going to protect you. And what can be a greater act of trusting than jumping? You could prove how loyal you are to God, and you'd be giving him this spectacular opportunity to display his power and his protection for those who follow him. And isn't it fitting that this psalm that speaks of God's protection for those who trust him uses this metaphor of striking your foot on a stone and the angels bearing you up? Because that's literally what would happen here. God would send his angels to catch you because you're the Son of God and you have shown so much trust by jumping. It's a perfect plan. Go ahead, jump. For you and me, the invitation to jump to your death is not particularly tempting, but think about the situation Jesus finds himself in. Looking at his present circumstances, Jesus would be tempted to think that God is angry with him or that he has lost God's favor somehow, and he ought to do something spectacular to get it back. Why is that so enticing? Why would it be attractive to stand on the corner of the temple, look at a thousand foot drop, and feel the urge to jump? Well, because in so far as Jesus was human, Jesus wanted to be loved by God. In his soul, just like you and me, he longs to be accepted by his father. And now Satan is challenging that very deep need. He's saying, Oh, you know, Jesus, it doesn't look like God loves you anymore, but I have a plan on how you can get back on his good side. With that longing for God's pleasure and the haunting fear that perhaps he has lost God's favor, the suggestion to gain God's favor again would be very attractive. Now before we look at Jesus' response to the temptation, I want to analyze the temptation itself because on the surface it looks as if there might not be anything wrong with Satan's logic, and his request seems perfectly reasonable. But I want to point out how his logic is wrong. It's really subtly wrong, and then we're going to look at how Jesus responds. Satan is asking Jesus to create an act of faith that is beyond the call of duty. Satan is asking Jesus to do something as an act of spectacular faith. And what's wrong with the spectacular faith? Satan's logic sounds pretty good. Let me give you an analogy. This is the kind of thing Satan is appealing to. Okay, consider the child who does his chores because his mother asked him to do it. Well, that's a good kid. But if that child did his chores without being asked, ooh, he's an angel, that's really great. And that's the sort of logic that Satan's counting on. And the temptation is to think that that is faith, but it is not. Christians cannot do something beyond the call of duty. If it's the right thing to do, God has already asked us to do it, and it is our duty. If it's beyond the call of duty, it is something God has not asked us to do, and we ought not to do it. I want to look at Luke 17, 5 through 10 briefly just to make this point. This is the apostles speaking to Jesus, and it starts this way. The apostles said to the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you. Which of you having a slave ploughing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from the field, Come immediately and sit down to eat? But will he not say to him, Prepare something for me to eat and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you may eat and drink. He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded, you say we are unworthy slaves, we have done only that which we ought to have done. Now there's a lot we could talk about in that passage. But it's significant for our purposes because it's a response to the disciples' appeal to increase their faith. They say, How do we get more faith? And after telling the mustard seed parable, Jesus gets into this parable describing the relationship between the master and the slave, and he makes the point the slave simply does what his master asks him to do. The master never thanks him for anything he does. There's no basis for that because everything that the slave does is his duty. It's impossible for him to go above and beyond the call of duty. If it was the right thing to do, then it was the slave's duty and he ought to have done it. If it was not the right thing to do, then the slave ought not to have done it. Now, again, there's a lot more we could say about this parable, but I think one thing Jesus is doing is giving us a picture of mature faith. Remember, this is in response to the disciples' request to have more faith. And part of what he's saying is, look, mature faith is not the child who makes his bed without being asked. Mature faith is the person who does that and only that which his father has asked him to do. It's not possible for a Christian to do something above and beyond the call of duty. If it's the right thing to do, then God has already asked you to do it, and as a Christian, you ought to do it. If it's the wrong thing to do, God has not asked you to do it, and you ought not to do it. Now that may sound scary, but I think it's really comforting because what he's saying is mature faith in God is simple, mundane, straightforward, average, ordinary, everyday. A obedience nothing spectacular, nothing magnificent. When we attempt to go above and beyond the call of duty, we have presumed to step outside of God's will and outside of his commandments, and that's not faith, that's presumption, and that's sin. To attempt something beyond the call of duty is presumption. Let me give you a better analogy for what Satan is asking. When a child does his chores without being asked, we think he has done something pleasing and considerate and thoughtful, but really he has only done that which he ought to have done. But when say a ten year old child, maybe with even the best of intentions, tries to drive the car to help mom with her chores and wrecks it and nearly kills himself, he has been presumptuous. That's more closely the analogy. He has stepped outside of his mother's will, and that's wrong. Now in my analogy it was also dangerous, but that's not really the point. For Jesus to have jumped off the pinnacle of the temple would have been presumptuous. It would have been taking initiative where initiative is not appropriate. His initiative would have amounted to insubordination. It would have been taking the car when he didn't even have a license, no matter how good his intentions were. For Jesus to have jumped would have been to reverse roles. For him to take the role of master instead of slave, he would be saying, Okay, God, now I'm the master and you're the slave. I'm gonna jump now and you will perform a particular spectacular miracle in just this way at this time. He might as well have stood up and said, Ladies and gentlemen, I'm now going to get the author and the creator of the universe to perform a new trick. Watch me jump. But that's not faith, it's presumption, it's coercion, it's threatening bodily harm to himself unless his demands for a miracle are met, and that is not our prerogative. We do not tell God what to do and when to do it. We should not throw ourselves into stupid, dangerous, or crazy situations as a quote act of faith, unquote. That's folly, that's foolishness. Instead, we should only do what God asks us to do. We should go where He asks us to go, and we should go when He asks us to go. The choice is attractive because Jesus is in a hard situation where it looks like he might have lost God's favor or that God is angry with him, and the choice is sinful because it's not an act of obedience or faith, it is an act of presumption. So how does Jesus respond? How does he see this issue? He's not gonna jump and why? Jesus responds to each temptation by quoting from Moses' sermon in Deuteronomy. He answers Satan by repeating the point that Moses made. If we understand what Moses said in his sermon, then we understand the point Jesus made to Satan. Now to understand Moses, we have to understand what happened to Israel in the wilderness, as the overall point of Moses' sermon is to review the lessons the wilderness was supposed to teach the nation of Israel. So we're going to go back and look at what happened in the wilderness, then at what Moses said about it, and then at how Jesus applies what Moses said to his own situation. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 616, which reads, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massah. So we need to know how Israel tested God at Masa, and that is found in Exodus seventeen. But before we read that, let's remind ourselves what Israel has experienced before the events recorded in Exodus seventeen. They were slaves in Egypt. God spoke to them through Moses and promised to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, and to take them to the promised land, the land he had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At first they don't believe it. But then God sends ten plagues on the Egyptians, including the Passover. As a result of the plagues, the Egyptian Pharaoh releases the nation of Israel, but then Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues them with his army as they flee. They make it to the shores of the Red Sea, and there God causes the waters of the Red Sea to part so that they can cross over on dry ground and escape the Egyptian army. When the Egyptians try to cross over on the dry ground, the waters close over them. Soon after that, when the Israelites encounter water that is undrinkable, God changes it to fresh drinkable water. That's in Exodus fifteen. When Israel has no food in the wilderness, God sends them mana from heaven that they gather each morning, and all these things have happened before the events at Massa. So let me read from Exodus seventeen verses one through seven. All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord, encamped at Rephedim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink, and Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? So Moses cried to the Lord, What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of the place Masa and Meribah because of the quarrelling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not? That word Masa means testing, and the word Meribah means quarrel. Now remember, up to this point, God has proved that He is both able and willing to take care of them. He proved it by getting them out of Egypt, He proved it by crossing the Red Sea, He's given them water before, He's given them food, but now there's this water problem again, and what do they do? They quarrel with Moses to the point that Moses is afraid they're going to kill him. So God has Moses perform a miracle. Moses strikes the rock with his staff and water gushes out. And once again, God shows himself both able and willing to take care of them. Now the concept we're most interested in is this word test, because that's the concept both Moses and Jesus refer back to. In 172, Moses says to the people, Why do you test the Lord? So in what sense are they testing the Lord? Fortunately, Moses gives us another clue in 177. Let me read that again. And he called the name of the place Masa and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not? That's a big clue for us. They tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord with us or not? In the last podcast we talked about this concept of testing. People are put to the test so that it becomes obvious what kind of people they are. Typically, we see God putting us in situations that test our faith. The question tested is are we going to follow Him or not? Are we going to trust Him? Do we have genuine saving faith or not? And how we respond to the situation reveals either that we do indeed have faith or that we don't. God is described as testing Israel by taking them into the wilderness. In part, their journey was to test whether they were people of faith and whether or not they would trust him in difficult circumstances. Here we see Israel testing God. They're asking the question, is God with us or not? And why are they asking that question? They feel like they don't know the answer because life has gotten hard. They don't have any water, and they conclude that God has demonstrated himself now to be untrustworthy by letting them go without water. They test him by demanding that he demonstrate his protection for them by immediately giving them water. They reject all the evidence they've already been given, and they're demanding more proof. This is a new problem, God must prove himself all over again. If he passes the test, then they'll consider trusting him again. Now in the Exodus story, there's one other place where Israel is described as testing God, and I think this is very revealing as well. They've arrived at the border of the promised land for the first time, and when the spies return with news of the people living in the land, they weep with fear, and we read this in Numbers fourteen, one through four. Then all of the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night, and all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or that would that we have died in this wilderness? Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? And they said to one another, let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt. So their faithless reaction is the final straw. God reacts to them with wrath, and he says, None of you are going to get to go in. And then skipping down to Numbers fourteen, twenty-two and twenty three, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times, and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers, and none of them who despise me shall see it. So God declares this generation is not going to enter the land, because they have put him to the test ten times. Now we only have one passage recorded in Scripture that uses the language of Israel putting God to the test, but many other events of the Exodus journey can be described as putting God to the test and demanding proof from him that he is with them and willing and able to protect them. For instance, this is as they are on the shores of the Red Sea right after escaping from Egypt. This is Exodus fourteen, ten through twelve. When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly, and the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. So here we see Israel has no trust in Moses or the Lord. They're asking the question, Is God with us or not? Is he trustworthy? And they think not, but notice that God passes the test. He parts the Red Sea and they are saved. And then here's another incidence, this is Exodus fifteen, twenty two through twenty four. Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went to the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Mara they could not drink the water of Mara because it was bitter, therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? So again they have no confidence that God is going to provide. Now instead of asking Moses to intercede for them, they quarrel and grumble. Instead of saying something like, You know, you took care of us in the past, you parted the Red Sea and all. Could you solve this problem? Instead of doing that, they quarrel and they grumble, and once again God responds graciously and he makes the water sweet, and then takes them to a place where there are twelve springs of water. Not too long after that they complain about the food. This is Exodus sixteen, two and three. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by meat pots and ate bread to the full, you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. So here again they think that God is not willing or able to provide for them. They grumble that there's nothing to eat, and once again God miraculously comes through for them, giving them the manna from heaven. So notice there's a certain consistency in the way Israel responds. They have this repeated refrain of why did we listen to Moses? Why are we out here? Why did we trust the Lord in the first place? And each time they quarrel with Moses, they test the Lord. They ask the question, does God still love us or not? Is God still with us or not? Is he taking care of us? And they are inclined to think, no, he's not. And each time the Lord responds graciously, he provides for them and he gives them what they need, protection, salvation, water, food, whatever it is the situation requires. Then we see the incident at Massa that we're looking at today in Exodus seventeen, and here they are explicitly described as quarreling with Moses and putting God to the test, but that's what they've been doing all along. Every time something scary happens, they immediately conclude God can't be trusted, and they refuse to trust him until he meets their standards of what a trustworthy God ought to look like, which is basically remove whatever their present distress is. It is this attitude that Moses is referring to in his sermon in Deuteronomy. Now remember, Deuteronomy is written the second time that Israel's at the border of the promised land. They have spent forty years wandering in the wilderness because of their lack of faith. A new generation has grown up and is ready to enter the land, and Moses is reminding them what lessons they were supposed to learn in the wilderness and urging them not to repeat the sins of their fathers. He's warning them against those failures. So Deuteronomy six sixteen is the verse Jesus quotes, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massa. Well now we understand what Moses means. At Massah, Israel had no water, and they quarreled with God and they put God to the test in spite of the many ways God had blessed them and shown his miraculous and powerful protection for them, they panicked. They refused to believe that God is still with them, and they refused to believe in spite of copious amounts of evidence to the contrary, that God was willing and able to solve this problem with the water. In essence, they're proclaiming they would only trust God if He did things exactly the way they wanted Him to. They demanded that He prove to them that He's trustworthy because they think the fact that life is hard means his trustworthiness is in doubt. They're saying, We're only going to trust you, Lord, if you pass our test. And Moses is warning them, don't make that same mistake. As you go into the promised land, this issue is going to come up again. Life is going to get hard. There will be obstacles in your way, and you'll be tempted to think that God no longer loves you or that he is no longer with you. And when that happens, remember what God has done for you in the past and the many ways he has blessed you and the many promises he has made, and do not test him. They are not to demand proof of his protection. They need to trust God in the land in a way they didn't trust him in the wilderness. And Moses is calling them to settle in their minds, God is trustworthy, act on that trust. That's what it means not to test God. Now we're ready to go back to Matthew. Let me read Matthew four, five through seven again. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus said to him, Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Well now we're in a position to figure out what Jesus is saying. Remember, Moses said, Remember that God is trustworthy and faithful, and don't demand proof that he will protect you no matter what obstacles fall into your path. Continue to trust him in difficult situations. Don't withhold your trust until he somehow demonstrates that he's trustworthy. Trust him now in the midst of the difficulties. Satan is tempting Jesus to put God to the test in just the way Moses has warned against. God has led Jesus into the wilderness and Jesus is starving. These circumstances could put God's trustworthiness in doubt. It looks like God could have forgotten him or abandoned him. And Jesus is left waiting for God to come to his aid. By jumping, Jesus would be demanding proof that God still cares. God would be forced to show that he is still acting to protect Jesus by saving him from the fall. Jesus would not be committing an act of faith at all. He would be coercing God into action. He would be presuming to take matters into his own hand, forcing God to act. He would be faithlessly demanding that God prove himself, and that is putting God to the test just as Israel did. You see, Satan left out a very important point. There's a sense in which Jesus has already jumped off the pinnacle. He has followed God into the wilderness and remained there without food. Jesus has done something that will lead to his death unless God intervenes. He has put his trust in God because God told him to go into the wilderness, and he is now waiting for God to provide or take him home or tell him it's time to move on. It's like he has been jumping very, very slowly. The key difference is that Jesus did not presumptuously seek to force God's hand. He went into the wilderness in response to God's clear and unambiguous leading. He did not create a situation and then expect God to solve it. He did what he was asked to do. He's not in the wilderness to make God prove himself. He's in the wilderness because God led him there. The greatest act of faith is not jumping off the pinnacle. The greatest act of faith is to stay where God has put you despite the cost, despite the hardship, despite the obstacles. In waiting for God to deliver him, Jesus is already exercising the faith that Satan is tempting him with. We often see this tension between future promises and present hardship. Israel was promised that God would lead them into prosperity in a new land. God parted the Red Sea, He gave them bread and water in the wilderness. Over and over again He demonstrated His trustworthiness, and yet Israel faced many difficulties and hardships in the wilderness, and each time they face a new hardship, they failed the test. Rather than remember God's goodness, remember his power, his promises, his past deliverance, and his protection, they panicked and demanded that he prove himself all over again. Jesus likewise saw the heavens open and proclaim him to be the Messiah. As the Messiah He was promised a glorious future reigning over all of creation. But now he's facing present trials and tribulations. The choice, the test is will he remember God's goodness and his power? And I think you and I face those same kinds of tests today. We've seen the cross, we've seen the resurrection, we know that justification is a done deal, and that God has promised to forgive us and free us from the temptation. Tyranny of sin and death, futility and corruption. But that promise is not yet fulfilled. We still live in a sinful world among sinful people and struggle with our own sin. Life is bitter and hard, and we're going to physically die someday. But the issue is the same. When life is hard, when there are obstacles in our path, will we remember the power and the promises of God as we face those hardships in life? Satan is urging Jesus to make God prove he's trustworthy. But Jesus knows that God has already demonstrated his faithfulness and his trustworthiness. God does not need to be tested. Jesus, in fact, is the one being tested. His faith and his trust in God is being put to the test, and that's a test we don't want to fail. We have great and magnificent promises from God, and it is wrong to withhold our trust until God proves himself to our satisfaction. Now you may say we didn't see water coming from the rock, or we didn't get bread from heaven, we didn't hear a voice from heaven like Jesus did, but God has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, and God has made himself known to us in our own personal experience if we had the eyes to see him. You and I are, in a sense, in the wilderness right now being tested. God has done great things in the past. God has promised us a great future. It is left to us to trust him in the present. And the great temptation we face is to test God and act presumptuously. Jesus is our model for how we react to those temptations. Jesus knows that there is no reason to test God or to mistrust him. God has already proved himself. God has already revealed himself. We're the ones being tested, and to pass the test, we only need to remain faithful. We're in no position to demand that God pass our test. If we're mistrustful of God, it's our own rebellious hearts that are lying to us. The only question is, are we people who will stand on the promises of God or not? Finally, once again in this temptation, Jesus is showing himself to be worthy of being the Messiah. He is worthy to be exalted by God. Jesus is the one who succeeds where Israel failed. That first generation tested God ten times and were denied access to the land. Once in the land the people make that same mistake again, failing to trust God and they were taken into exile for it. Now Jesus, their greatest son, son of Abraham, son of David, has enacted the faithfulness they never achieved, and his faithfulness will be our salvation. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. Your podcast feed may be limited to the last 20 or so episodes, but you can hear all previous episodes by going to my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There are no advertisements and no requests for donations. There's only podcasts and Bible study resources, and it's all free, designed to help you improve your skills and understanding. If you'd like to thank me, please consider joining the mailing list, subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find all of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thanks for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.